Getting started with loops can seem complicated and confusing. People talk about interfaces, direct boxes, Ableton vs Reason vs Logic vs everything else and the complexity of some setups can be daunting.Rest assured, once you get started – you’ll want to do all those fancy things, but to get started – all you need is a couple cables and a pair of direct boxes. A picture is worth 1000 words right? Good!
Lets face it. We all know the benfits of an in ear monitoring system and many a small church sings the same tune – “I wish we had the funds for an Aviom System.” Consider the following price tag for 16 channels of in ear monitoring:
Aviom A-16II Personal Mixer $620.00 x 5 = $3,100 (1 for each musician)
Aviom A-16D Pro A-Net Distributor $1365.00 (Connecting the musicians to the input module)
Aviom MT-1 $31.00 x 5 = $155 (Mounting hardware)
Aviom AN-16/i Input Module $1195.00 (Standard 16 channel input module)
GRAND TOTAL = $5,815! ZOWIE!!!
Well the party is over, Aviom. Say hello to Qmix.
Qmix is a highly affordable alternative for any church on a budget and is part of Studio Live by PreSonus. This system not only addresses personal mixer issues, but it does it with hardware most of you already have, It also provides a full channel strip on every channel and the ability to multi-track record every channel on the desk every weekend. Just the channel strip (EQ and Compression on every channel) alone is worth thousands in analog hardware.
Well… a picture tells a thousand words. Check this video out.
The cost for the same 16 channels from PreSonus?
PreSonus StudioLive 16.0.2 = $1,299.00
Need we say anymore? The Aviom alternative has arrived!
If you have questions about how to implement Studio Live in your church send us an email.
If you’re just getting started with loops, you need to know that an in-ear system make the process much easier and if you operate in the music space at all, you have probably heard of Aviom. What you may not know however, is what Avioms are, how they work, why they’re better than wedges, and how they’re not as expensive as you might think! Let’s take a walk through an Aviom system and understand what each element is and what it does.
The Control Unit / Personal Mixer
This is the A16-ii – Aviom’s standard per-musician personal mixer. In an Aviom environment, each musician (and vocalist) gets one of these units. Each unit has receives up to 16 channels of audio and is used to make a unique, custom mix for your ears only. What you do on this unit does not affect the other units in any way. For each of the 16 audio channels, you have volume and left-right pan control. You also have master bass, treble, and volume knobs. These units take an ethernet input (from the A-Net system which we’ll talk about later) and have a 1/4 inch headphone jack output.
You, as the musician, can turn up the instruments you need and turn down everything you don’t care about. As a vocalist you can choose to hear the other singers, the piano, and the acoustic guitar while leaving out the electric guitars, bass, and loop tracks. As a drummer, you may only care to hear the worship leader and not the background vocals. Aviom systems make this possible since each unit has independent volume control of each audio channel.
In addition to the mixing capabilities of the unit, you also have some more utilitarian functions like solo and mute for each channel as well as the ability to save your current mix to a preset and recall it at any time (either later in the set, next week, in a year, etc) and the ability to reset all levels to zero.
The A-Net Distributor
Audio is distributed to the per-musician personal mixers from an A-Net distributor. These are commonly available in 2 flavors:
The A-16D:
The A-16D Pro
Both of these units have an A-Net input (which comes from the input device – that’s the next part) and 8 outputs, each of which hook up to the personal mixers. There is one major difference between these two units: the outputs of the A-16D Pro also provide power for the personal mixers so you don’t need to use wall-warts to power thepersonal mixers. It helps keep your stage clean and saves you on power cables and extension cords. The other minor difference is that the A-16D Pro can be daisy-chained to additional units if you need more ports. It’s worth noting however, that you can daisy-chain up to 3 mixers off each other but will need to use the wall-wart either way.
The Input Module
So now we know how the musician on stage can make their own monitor mix, we also know how that A-Net signal gets distributed to the mixers; what we don’t know, is how the audio gets into the A-Net system. This is accomplished through the use of one of Aviom’s input modules. Input modules are available for just about every situation. Here is a couple of commonly used input modules:
The 16x line level analog input module has 16 line-level 1/4 inch inputs on the back. If your sound console has direct outputs, this is likely the input module right for you.
The 16x mic level analog input module has 16 microphone inputs on it as well as 16 mic outputs. This allows you to take your instruments and vocals directly to the Aviom system and then to your sound console. If your mixer doesn’t have direct outputs, this is probably the easiest way to get started.
Aviom also makes a digital card for use in Yamaha LS9′s, M7′s, and most of their larger consoles as well. This card uses an available slot on the mixer and can send any combination of sources from the desk.
Hooking It All Up
Regardless of the input module you use, all you need is a single Ethernet cable (Cat 5 or higher) connecting the input module to the A-Net distributor. From the A-Net distributor to the personal mixers is another Ethernet cable, and the you can plug headphones (either traditional or in-ear) straight into your personal mixer.
But Why
No more stage wedges, no more stage volume arguments, and no more asking the guy at the sound mixer for more of yourself! Having individual control over your own mix lets you decide what’s important to you and that is what you hear.
The price isn’t as bad as you might expect. 5 Personal Mixers and a distributor will run you ~$3,800 from Sweetwater plus the cost of the input module for your sound console. When you compare that against the cost of 5 wedges, amps, and all the cabling, it’s not unreasonable and the flexibility is much, much greater.
Questions?
If you’re confused, don’t be shy! Avioms can be complicated and confusing, ask your questions in the comments and we’ll help you get sorted out. If you’re already using them, I would love to hear what problems they resolved, both on your stage and at your church!
In the past, we have discussed the technical aspects of mixing loops for the general congregation (Front-of-House), as well as running loops from the stage for the worship leader. To complete the idea, in this post, we’re going to take a look at mixing loops for the monitor engineer.
It doesn’t matter if you church has a dedicated audio console for monitors or if you run the wedges and in-ear mixes from the primary mixer, this is for you! Mixing monitors for an experienced worship band can be a very demanding task. Each player may have very specific desires concerning what they want to hear. In addition, they may not be very good at articulating what they would like to hear. Having an Aviom system (or something similar) greatly eases this burden, but many churches still run wedges, or a combination of Avioms with in-ears and wedges. To develop the best mix for your musicians, you have to take a look at the elements of each loop and consider their value to the musician.
Most loop tracks consist of two primary elements: a click / vocal cue track and a ‘loop track’. The loop track is what contains the actual sonic elements that add to your band; while the click/cues track is what helps your band stay in time with the track. These two elements must be treated differently since they serve two totally different purposes.
The Click Track
The click is essentially a metronome for the band to follow. This ensures that the percussive elements of the track are in sync with what the band is doing. With any luck, you’re already running a click track for your non-loop songs and there should be no learning curve for your band with this. Often the drummer will be responsible for running the click throughout a service. If you already have a click, you should send the click channel from the loops to the same people. The drummer, without exception, needs to hear the click from the loop. Other players may vary by the track and the vocal cues. Some tracks only have a click, and therefore some players may not want to hear it, they’d rather follow the drummer. However, some tracks also have vocal cues that signal the start of each verse, chorus, bridge, and tags. These elements help your band be ahead of the next transition rather than behind it.
In general, the only people who may not want the click is the vocalists. They may follow the band well enough that it is only distracting. There are of course, exceptions to this. Many slow songs have sparse instrumentation, especially on introductions and bridges and vocalists will rely on that click to keep in time so thing don’t go awry during those sections.
The Loop Track
The loop itself is an entirely different animal than the click. Depending on the musical content of the loop, this may change week to week or even song to song. For the loop, you’ll need to work out with each band member if they’d like to hear the loop in their ears/wedge. Almost certainly, the team member running the loops will want to hear them, as will the drummer. Guitarists and vocalists will come down to personal preference.
Since most loops are electronic sounds and rarely contain actual recordings, they have the potential to be painfully bright or overpowering in a monitor mix. As the monitor engineer, you’ll want to be sure to tame portions of the loop that may compete with other critical elements in your mix. For example, if a loop has a large string part, but it’s covering up the piano in the vocalist wedge, you may need to pull some of the low end out of the strings so the vocalists can still hear the piano for their notes. On the other hand, a loop may have a big kick drum beat that the drummer needs to help stay on time. Boosting the low end in the drummer mix is fine as long as you have individual control over their mix – you wouldn’t want to boost the low end of the loop in all monitors. If you’re using an analog console and have 1 EQ to share, consider hooking a 31-band EQ to the outputs for each wedge. This will allow you to adjust mix-level things like overall low-end for the drummer/bass player or mid-range presence for vocalists.
The important thing to remember is that most of the time, the loop is there to add to the band, not replace it. Make sure it doesn’t replace anything in the monitor mixes either!
