Browns Bridge Advanced Monitor Training
I spent Saturday afternoon up at our Browns Bridge campus where Chris Briley was holding some advanced monitor training for his volunteers. He loaded up a show on his FOH console and then had a really cool setup with his video screens. He had the Venue’s display on his center screen with the side screens featuring cameras pointed at the control surface on the desk. It was pretty cool. A couple of our M1’s were on hand to get their first introduction to mixing monitors on the Venue since the hope is to move our MON consoles to Venues at some point in 2007.
Last Thursday I met with Houston Clark from Clark ProMedia to talk about getting the designs rolling for our system upgrades at North Point. It was great to sit down with Houston since it’s been a while, and I love working with those guys on these big projects. The next 12-18 months should be exciting as we move forward on the two projects. I’m excited because I had such a blast in Chicago when I did one big room with them, and now I get to do two. It’s going to be an interesting year.
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Any chance that something like this might be filmed/thrown online?
Unfortunately it wasn’t filmed. I’ll keep it in mind next time we have training to see if it’s something we can export.
I would love to know more details about how you plan to implement the Venue for monitors. What I am most curious about is that it only has 16 auxes. How then will you setup the system to handle an all IEM situation? What kind of routing solutions are there to create more mixes? That kind of thing. I’m on the hunt for a digital desk for our church but need to be able to do double duty FOH and monitors from one desk. I’m currently using an Aviom system to assist us but find that it is tricky with IEMs.
I just realized I never responded to this. Sorry.
The Venue is already implemented at our Browns Bridge campus, and they are entirely in-ears there. In fact, I don’t think they installed any amps for wedges, but I could be wrong about that.
Basically, the Venue can be configured for what they call “variable groups”. In a nutshell, this converts your 8 mono subgroups into aux sends giving you 24 buses for 12 stereo IEM mixes. If we need more mixes we can start to fake it to a certain extent using the PQ and Matrix mixes along with the master buses. When we get this setup at North Point, we will run out of RF long before we run out of buses…
In a one console situation, I don’t like IEMs being done from FOH. In my opinion, IEM mixes need a lot more attention than a traditional monitor wedge mix, and a FOH engineer–especially a volunteer FOH engineer–can’t give them the attention they need without the FOH mix suffering or the IEM mixes suffering. It can be done, and a LOT of people make it work these days, but it wouldn’t meet our bar and I think it’s more pressure than a volunteer should have to deal with; in my tenure mixing in houses of worship there are always plenty of cooks around to give their thoughts….
In IEM situations with one console, I would do what you’re doing with an Aviom setup for monitors and feed them with a combination of direct outs, auxes, and/or subgroups as necessary. The Avioms aren’t perfect, but neither is running monitors from FOH. The Avioms take the burden off the FOH guy provided he can get the Avioms what they need in terms of signal. If a musician can’t get what they need from these, it’s going to be a struggle no matter what.