I might have said this before, I strongly support Mike?s point of view, and I have been applying myself, in a greater or lesser extent, over the past 20 years whenever I can. Currently I play in a trio where we carry our own (small) mixing board, and run an in-ear monitor system where all of us hear exactly the same as the FOH mix (in fact, the FOH output -for which most soundmen love us, we only ask for a couple lines, panned discrete, gain at 0 db, eq?d flat, no mons, no efx. They amaze at first on that they simply have NO WORK on us, then they enjoy the show with a drink and a smile- is fed through the Control Room / Phones output, and the in-ear is fed from the Main output. This way, we can open signal on the in-ears WITHOUT opening the FOH feed, fix the mix completely, and when we?re ready we feed the FOH with exactly the same thing we are hearing on our in-ears. All of us are accustomed to hear ourselves within context, so there?s no more me, no need for separate mixes,no nothing. Show in stereo on your ears, with attention to detail, and in your hands to control anything that may arise.
Whenever I play higher profile venues (whatever that might be in this country...) i have a lesser quality audio performance, no matter who is behind the board, mostly because everything ends up sounding as THEY want, instead of how I want to sound like, no matter the king of gig or music I?m playing. FOr an instance, SO MANY techs seem not to understand that I DO NOT WANT my bass to be run directly to the board from a DI box, or that I want control over my Bass EQ, or my bass rack for that instance (Which sense would it make to bring a preamp, eq and comps rack onstage for the bass of you?re going to hook my bass directty to the DI box and then send the thru to the rack and then the amp?) Well, most soundguys around here seem not to have any idea about this -and therefore I try to teach my students at the Audio and Acoustics school I teach at to take care on details such as these...- . By carrying on the mix on ourselves, we save a lot of time and fighting over such issues, and if we?re lucky enough, can find the proper equipment to carry and yet be able to handle the entire band. Well, at least sometimes.
