On 1/10/2015 10:56 AM, leepincat wrote:
Just watched an episode of, "Letterman's Late Night" program,
and noticed that most of the musicians in the late night band
had a small (approx. 4"x4") black box attached to their mic stands,
right beneath their vocal mics.
One more guess . . . a personal monitor controller. Did you notice if
the band members were using in-ear monitors? A lot of shows are sending
individual channels or submixes to a small mixer at each musician's
station. This allows him to make his own adjustments to the monitor mix.
It's used more with in-ear systems than with monitor speakers because
it's much more difficult (and painful) to get feedback from an earphone
than from a loudspeaker if the gain on the closest mic is turned up too
far. With a personal-mix monitor system and earphones, a singer or
player can get as much "me" in the monitor as he wants without bothering
anyone else on stage who doesn't want to hear him that loud.
And another guess, if its still being made - a sensor that automatically
mutes a mic when the performer steps away from it and un-mutes it when
he steps up to the mic. I don't know how successful this system was. I
haven't seen it advertised for a long time.
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