Headphone Cue

[timmymacParticipant]

So what is everyone using for headphone cues? Console aux sends, digital cues like aviom, or just routing it in your DAW? Also when recording a whole band at once do you send a stereo mix to everyone or do you do individual mixes for each musician? Thanks!

[Mark WarnerParticipant]

Hi Tim, Originally, when I had a large Allen and Heath desk I would send individual monitor mixes for each musician. Since down sizing and going digital after a 2 or 3 different combinations of Hardware/Software setups which included modifying a small desk to send a separate dry and cue mix using the onboard FX via ctrl/monitor and main outputs. The mod enabled the onbaord FX to be removed from the main out but added to the cue out via ctrl/monitor.
In the end I started looking around for a more permanent and flexible solution within my limited budget. I settled on using Presonus' Monitor station as this allowed up to 4 headphones individually switchable between ST1 (Main) and ST3 (Cue). It also controls 3 sets of speakers and I have it so I can monitor Main (Dry), Cue (wet) and Aux (direct from my small desk).
By coincidense when I was looking for a new AD/DA converter within a budget I also settled on a Presonus 1818VSL because, in its price point, it was the only larger converter I could get that supported on board FX that I could create cue and main mixes with easily.
So my current recording signal path is Mic or Inst in to small desk (PV14) with inserts such as Compression/Tube pre-amp via the plug board, into the Presonus 1818vsl, here the signal is split to different output pairs, one for dry, one wet for cue and these are both sent on to the Monitor station where dry comes in on ST1 (Stereo 1) and Cue on ST2. ST1 is generally used for control room monitoring although I can easily switch to ST2 and ST2 is sent via headphones back to the singer musician. This works well for me as I generally only have myself and the artist in the studio at one time. On the rare occasions I have more than one and they all need different mixes then I can also use the Presonus 1818vsl to create 2 more stereo mixes which I can then send via separate outs to another headphone amplifier. I don't have any dedicated headphone amps but I do have a number of small mixers which I keep as backups having once been caught out by a power failure during a recording session, so I can set these up near the artist and they can tweak levels and EQ on their headphones to their taste.

Hope this is useful to you

Cheers - Mark

PS The one thing I don't do is do it in the DAW. For me that usually means changing a lot of settings and then having to remember which ones to change back again. Pressing a button is much easier and doesn't distract from the task at hand.

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