Recent Gig Issue

Yea mix in your headphones in situations like that

Yeah, anything more than a couple (2-3 metres) from your ears, especially when in front of and facing away from you is cause for worry as far as induced delay is concerned. With the higher frequencies having to make a detour through reflection (like the snare/clap) you are looking at relatively long delays that will throw off your mix.

Obviously the headphone trick will work, but only if your controller/mixer features split cue so you can hear the master mix in one ear and the incoming track on the other.

Those who have followed some of my earlier posts know that I am big advocate of monitors. I always bring my own. Small enough (although slightly heavy :-)) to carry around with the microphone stand it sits on. Mind you, monitor speakers are really only any good when the controller/mixer has a booth out control.

Obviously you can set the speakers behind you, but that is a surefire way to screw up your ears in no time flat. I do not ever stand in front of my speakers any more (another reason is that I couldn’t use the microphone without incurring major feedback).

I use the headphone mix at home to practice when I don’t want to disturb the others in the house or the neighbours, but in real life I don’t want to isolate myself like that, so I prefer a monitor speaker in that case.

Greetinx,
C.

Hi, mine is the 100W Numark NPM100. Because they opted for two full-range 5″ speakers instead of one bigger with a small tweeter, they are pretty compact (although, as I said, not lightweight). I have mine sitting on a microphone stand, it angles up so I can move it to a position where it is aimed straight at my free ear. With a distance of less than 1 meter to my ear the volume is plenty loud to not have to worry about the mains. I actually can never turn it up full force, too loud. And I turn it down in between mixes.

Sound quality of the Numark is good, but really irrelevant. As long as you can get the booms and the claps, you are good to go 🙂

Good luck with your decision.

Greetinx,
C.

I’d run into this occasionally in my old vinyl mixing days. With the sync button and custom computer setups there can be an additional layer to troubleshoot. However, some rooms will just have funny echos. In one case it was so bad that I had to put on both headphones and actively ignore what was happening outside them.