By Robert Scovill
As a monitor engineer, you’re mixing audio for the most demanding ears in the building: the artists on stage. And as luck would have it, many times when one person wants you to address a change on their behalf, somebody else will want something done at the same time. More often than not, an artist or road crew person will communicate these changes by using clever hand signals or by “lipping” the change to you, if they are even able to make eye contact with you from 20 or 30 feet away on the stage. As concert fans, we have all seen this kind of activity before—some gestures are more animated than most monitor engineers would care to see.

The impressive routing flexibility of the VENUE system’s matrixes provides an easy and efficient means to build a comprehensive communication hub right into your console. Through some creative patching and the use of a single TDM plug-in, you can make sure you never again miss or misinterpret a requested change during a show.

The concept I’ll outline below is quite simple. It involves taking the local monitor outputs that provide your means of listening to solo’d inputs and outputs and mixing them with a number of talkback mics. Through the use of a plug-in gate/ducker, you can allow those talkback mics—when switched on—to reduce or “duck” the level of only the solo signals you are listening to. This will allow you to hear the talk back sources clearly without having those signals compete with your solo levels. You can monitor your show without having to interrupt your normal workflow whatsoever.

Let’s take a large-scale concert example. Say you’re mixing monitors for a five-piece band where each musician has their own crew person. In this case, we would give each crew member a microphone with an on/off switch and allow them to talk directly to you to inform you of requested changes or problems. This setup can also serve as a great communication path during line checks.

Before we dig into the specifics, you’ll need the following items to accomplish the task at hand: the desired number of talkback mics with on/off switches and three ¼" TRS–to–¼" TRS cables. They won’t need to be long—about 12" to 18" will be fine. Once you have them, make the following hard patches: [Figure 1]

• TRS insert send 14 to TRS insert return 14
  
• Local Monitor outputs left and right to TRS insert returns 15 and 16 respectively

Figure 1. TRS insert send and return 14 are patched together, and Local Monitor outs are patched to TRS insert returns 15 and 16. (These connector numbers can be any TRS connector or even the AES digital connections—the analog I/O were chosen here only to provide a means to follow the examples below.)

Make Your Soft Patches
To get started, we’ll set up our inputs. I’ve labeled a series of inputs and set them up sequentially to represent the talkback and communication mics. [Figure 2] Note I’ve also added one called “FOH TB Mic,” which can originate from the front-of-house position so that the FOH mixer can get your attention at any time as well. Again, this is really great for line checks and emergency situations.

Figure 2. Talkback inputs (TB) are soft patched from Stage Rack 1 into input channels.

Editor’s note: At least one microphone manufacturer now offers a wireless mic that can remotely switch the audio output of its receiver to a dedicated communications output, which can be routed to one of these talkback inputs. With that configuration, your artist can communicate at any time using the wireless mic—without the audience hearing it. Very slick indeed!

As you can see in Figure 2, I’ve also added an input labeled “Intercom,” which I’ve soft patched from the Com input on the back of the FOH rack. The Com input can accept intercom audio signals from systems such as Clear Com and others. Also note the mono and a stereo channels labeled “Com Matrix Return” and “Local Monitor.” These channels will receive return signals that come from a mono matrix and a stereo PQ matrix. A soft patch completes our initial hard patch made with the short TRS cables. For the mono matrix, I’ve chosen Matrix 8. It will exit the FOH via TRS send 14 [Figure 3] and return to the “Com Matrix Return” channel via TRS return 14. The local monitor outs will return to the console via TRS returns 15 and 16. [Figure 4]

Editors note: Care should be taken not to solo the “Local Monitor” return channel or AFL the Stereo PQ Matrix that carries the monitor return assigned as a user-defined input. Doing so will result in an audible feedback loop.

Figure 3. Mono matrix 8 exits the FOH Rack via TRS send 14.

Figure 4. Mono and stereo channels receive input from the Com input and TRS returns 14, 15, and 16.

Build a Mono Coms Mixer
Next let’s set up mono matrix 8 and its user-defined channels to receive and mix all of the communication mic channels and intercom together. This mixed signal will be returned to our “Com Matrix Return” channel. [Figure 5] The reason for doing this will soon be apparent.

Figure 5. All communications mics are assigned to a mono matrix via the user-defined input’s drop-down menu.

Use a Stereo PQ Matrix as Your Local Monitor Output
Now we can use a dedicated Stereo PQ Matrix to combine the stereo “Local Monitor” return channel with our mono “Com Matrix Return” channel. We’ll then use that Stereo PQ Matrix output to drive our local listening station, with either wedges or in-ear monitors. First select those return channels as user-defined inputs to the matrix. [Figure 6] Then set the levels and panning, and finally, soft patch the output of the PQ matrix to the chosen connectors on the FOH or Stage Rack that will drive your local monitor speaker system.

Figure 6. Assign and blend the local monitor output and talkback mics. This output will be used to drive local listen wedges or personal ear monitors.

Editor’s note: When picking your user-defined inputs for the Stereo PQ Matrix, you have the opportunity to choose line-level inputs directly from the TRS return points. This would provide a way to deliver your monitor output return directly to the matrix as opposed to creating a stereo channel first. If you choose this method, you will then need to ensure that the ducker plug-in mentioned below is inserted on the “Bus Outs > Mains > Monitor Stereo” to complete the signal flow concept.

The Most Important Part—The Plug-in
Remember earlier I said it would be apparent why we use a mono matrix to carry the talk back signals and return it to a channel? Well, here is the reason. We’re going to use the direct output of that channel as a side-chain or key signal for a gate/ducker that will be inserted across the local monitor output. For this example I’ll use the Drawmer Tour Buss gate/ducker plug-in. As you can see, this gate/ducker plug-in can accept a side chain signal from the direct output of the channel receiving the blend of all the talkback mics. This will cause the plug-in to act only when it sees signal from any talkback source.

Figure 7. A Drawmer gate/ducker is applied to the local monitor output. Note that the key-source or side-chain signal chosen is the pre-fader direct output of the Com Matrix Return channel.

To set up the plug-in, first make sure the gate is switched to duck mode and set to receive an external side-chain or key-input signal. Now set your threshold so that any talkback mic will activate the duck when a mic is used. The range control will dictate how much the signal level of your solo’d signals will be reduced when someone speaks into a talkback mic. The attack will affect how fast the solo signal level goes down, and the release time will dictate how fast the level comes back to its normal listening level once the person stops talking. [Figure 7] Now anytime a person needs to contact you with a change, they simply speak into the mic. The ducker reduces the listening level of your solo’d input or output signals, ensuring you can hear the person clearly. Very cool!

Editor’s note: One of the nice advantages of digital patching is that you can easily send one signal many places. In this case, let’s take the direct output of the “Coms Matrix Return” channel and not only feed the side-chain of your gate/ducker, but also send it out a Stage Rack output (in the digital Patchbay) so that it can be patched into an input for the front-of-house mixing position. This will allow the FOH mixer to set up his or her own communications ducker without requiring duplication of all of the talkback input channels. You’re simply providing the matrix output of the blended talkback mics and intercom. Again, this is a primo tool during line check and will make communication fast and dependable. See the block diagram below for more detail.

Figure 8. The complete patch design of the communications system.

Now, admittedly, this may feel like a lot of steps, but it’s actually quite logical—not at all “black ju ju,” I assure you. It only takes a few minutes to assemble this scheme. Once you have all the necessary elements and employ them, you, your crew, and your artist may never want to go back to the old way of communicating on stage. Who knows—audience members might even see a decline in artists regularly looking like they are having some sort of seizure during the performance all in a failed attempt to get your attention and make the correct adjustment! Now wouldn’t that be nice for all involved?