Dave Rat - Live Sound Mixing Strategy

Dave Rat describes a setup/mixing strategy for large rock shows that helps keep your mix together.

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Science & Technology

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[InstantReverbPro]

Hey Dave, I've been using a similar strategy to this for about a year now, so THANK YOU for posting this. It has taken all of the pain out of mixing big heavy bands. Getting the vocals to cut in some of these REALLY small venues was hard, but with them compressed right in the sub groups I can keep my mix sounding right even with the biggest hairiest metal bands.

[www73171]

@InstantReverbPro Cool! Yes, it works well and makes mixing a better sound much easier.

[neloangelo678]

yeah i dont quite understand the VCA 10 and 11 situation! :/

[tomazy001]

thank You very much for sharing. Respect to all of you in the bussines!

[christopheronald]

@www73171 great idea. ill mess with it this week. thanks for the heads up.

[www73171]

@christopheronald So if you cant assign aux/groups to VCA's just assign all the inputs to a VCA which will be the pre comp-threshold volume control and then use your master left/right as post comp threshold control. Turning the VCA up and L/R down causes more compression and turning the VCA down and L/R up results in less overall compression.

[christopheronald]

@www73171 i think my problem is that i cannot assign auxes to a vca on our console. we have a apb dynasonics spectra 48 channel. insert points on the auxes, so i can send stuff to comps easy, i just cant assign all of those comps/auxes to a vca, and band between everything like you suggest in this video. sound right? ha

[www73171]

@christopheronald Assign the Vox to subgroups 1 and 2, put the comps on the subgroups. send the sub groups to L and R

[christopheronald]

@christopheronald like lets say i have 3 vocal channels, and i assign vocal channels 1 2 and 3 to aux one and two, which i have a stereo comp on. do i have the individual channels going to the mains, or just the aux? lets say we are doing this with vca 1 and 2. what do i assign to what? sorry if this seems trivial. it just hasnt clicked for me yet. gonna nap on it :)

[christopheronald]

maybe its just because im not standing in front of our desk, but i cant seem to get the routing figured out in my head. we have a 48 channel apb dynasonics spectra console, which i absolutely adore. my confusion stems from how i would assign things and where i would put the comps and such. to make things easy, lets just pretend im doing vocals for this example. our board has 10 vcas, and 10 auxes, with insert points on both auxes. cant fit everything i want to type.

[christopheronald]

@www73171 sounds interesting. dont forget to make that one. please? :) (drummer dork/foh here)

[christopheronald]

@brunton82 clean signal is just that. most likely just bass. dirty might be like with a slight bit of distortion or fuzz or something like that. just like on a guitar. clean channel, and distorted.