On 11/15/2016 12:33 AM, Dave O'Heare wrote:
I find myself doing a lot of mixing via iPad these days, often with the
physical console stuffed someplace inaccessible
Mostly it's doable, but I find that I miss having cue headphones. Which
input is that buzz coming from, has what's-their-name shut their mic off
again, finding all that sort of nonsense without PFL makes my work a lot
tougher than I want it to be.
Do I just bite the bullet and add an IEM pack and another set of phones to
the amount of crap I'm already wearing, or is there an easy and preferably
cheap way to, say, feed the stereo audio as streaming audio over Wi-Fi?
Gotcha! The trade-off between the cost of a WiFi link and remote app
wins over making a physically larger console will all the controls at
your fingertips (and a place to put it) that you might need. It's
certainly attractive for a certain kind of show - a dozen or fewer mics,
one act or at most two in a show, and accepting that a problem that
occurs unexpectedly might take a little longer to resolve.
What do you do? You pay very close attention to what's coming out of the
speakers, and when you hear something that you can't fix with your
remote controls, you hustle back to wherever the mixer is stashed, and
work from there. Or you use a setup as you describe, with a wireless
link between the console's headphone jack or monitor output and a
receiver in your pocket.
And how come nobody has built this stuff in to a console yet?
"It's the economy, stupid!" Makers of $25,000+ consoles could afford to
integrate the technology, but those consoles are, for the most part,
used in fully-staffed shows or at minimum provided by a company that can
afford to implement their own remote monitoring solution if it's necessary.
Makers of $2,500- mixers can't afford to include a feature that might
add upwards of $200 to the retail cost of the mixer that the majority of
their customers won't use. Their product design is based on offering a
one-size-fits-all concept rather than offering a selections of options.
Even the cost of adding a connector and a hole in the panel to mount an
optional transmitter would increase the manufacturing cost and would
have to be studied carefully.
--
For a good time, call
http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com