Mio console headphone feeds free#

Nevertheless, there's no reason not to invert the phase of the vocal channel's mic preamp (provided that you are only recording one part at a time), as this will produce exactly the same result from the singer's point of view. Usually the singer will feel more comfortable with one setting than the other, but, unfortunately, most mixers don't have a phase switch on the headphone output. The reason for this is that the natural 'acoustic' sound of the voice heard after being conducted through the head combines with that of the headphones, and if the phase of the headphones is inverted, the perceived result can be dramatically different, as the two sounds combine in different ways. Again the amount of reverb you feed into the mix should be agreed with the performer, and it's wise to double-check your mixer routing to ensure that you aren't actually recording the reverb, just the dry vocal, as you may wish to use an entirely different reverb treatment during the mix proper.Īn interesting point to note is that the perceived sound of your own voice over headphones can be very different depending on the phase of the headphones. In this scenario, the mix that is set up during overdubbing should be one the performer wants to hear, not necessarily the ideal balance, and, in the case of vocals, setting up a temporary reverb usually helps inspire a more confident performance and can help with pitching.

Open-backed phones tend to leak very badly, and, while this may not matter to a guitar player where the amp is close-miked, it presents real problems when recording vocals. The amount of leakage you get from headphones might seem to be small, but high pitched sounds in particular can leak quite noticeably, so the greater the isolation the phones give you the better.

Inexpensive extension cables are available for when you need to work at a distance from the recorder/mixer (as you may wish to do to avoid mechanical noise) and the reason for choosing enclosed phones is to prevent the backing track from spilling into the recording mic. In the typical project studio, audio tracks tend to be overdubbed one at a time, so the simplest possible setup is to use the headphone output on the recorder, workstation or mixer to feed a pair of enclosed headphones. That means devising a different strategy, and in many cases a simple solution is all that's needed.

Mio console headphone feeds free#

In a typical project studio, though, the number of free pre-fade sends may be very limited - or even non-existent if the system is entirely computer-based. The clear benefit here is that you can set up as many different monitor mixes as you have pre-fade sends (pre-fade sends are used so that the monitor mix doesn't change if the main mix faders are moved). In full-scale commercial studios, the usual solution is to provide multiple headphone feeds for the different performers, each derived from a separate pre-fade mix buss on the studio console. It's this last meaning I'd like to explore in this article, because the way in which a performer monitors what else is going on in the track can be critical to extracting a good performance. The word monitor is much overworked in recording studio circles - as a noun, it can be a monitor loudspeaker or a computer monitor screen, whereas, in its guise as a verb, it can mean 'keeping an eye on things', it can mean listening to a mix via the monitor speakers or it can relate to the performer who's listening to the backing track over headphones while overdubbing a vocal or instrumental part. There are, however, a number of different approaches and it is important to choose the most appropriate for the task at hand. One of the secrets of overdubbing is setting up good cue monitoring for the performer.