Concert Monitors - EAW UMX.96 Owner's Manual

EAW UMX.96 Owner's Manual
3.12.3

Concert Monitors

For monitor usage, the first thing you'll need is a way to split the microphone signals. That might be an
active splitter, transformers, or a simple parallel split. Each has their pros and cons, and discussing them
beyond the simple mention of their existence is beyond the scope of this manual.
You can use the Aux Mode to temporarily switch the faders to show you the levels for all channels into one
mix. Remember that this doesn't really change any of the signal routing inside the console; all it does is map
the level controls for any aux send onto the faders. You can enter and leave aux mode as you need and you
can see all of the levels from one channel into all 24 aux/group sends on the fat channel.
For this application, here are the requirements:
• Six independent mono mixes that are sent to wedges.
• Two stereo in-ear mixes, with ambient mikes.
• Sidefills
First, you'll tackle the issue of the signal processing required for each mix. In the old days, you'd have a rack
of stuff with at least a 1/3 octave EQ and maybe a comp-limiter, PER MIX. You'll use the UMX.96's aux/group
processing to handle the per-mix signal processing.
Each of the 24 aux/group sends has a full complement of processing available: highpass and lowpass filters,
compressor/limiter, parametric EQ, and a 31-band graphic EQ. The 31-band EQ can access Smaart, so you can
use Smaart to help understand what you're hearing and to sort out feedback problems.
Create six aux mixes, and set them to post fader. Set the channel faders to the Unity mark. Create the wedge
mixes as required. You can use the channel faders as masters for that source once the mixes are dialed in.
For each mix use the aux/group outputs. Set the HPF and LPF as required. For the wedges, be sure to use
the HighPass filters to chop out any unwanted low frequencies. This is decidedly better than using the old
rock-and-roll hack of dumping the last sliders on the graphic EQ. Although this is better than nothing at all,
it doesn't even come close to working as well as the steep highpass filter the UMX.96 provides. You should
probably leave the LowPass filters switched out, or at least set them to 20kHz.
For the in-ear mixes, create two stereo aux mixes and send them to the in-ear processor. Connect the two
ambient mikes to the console's mic inputs and route them to the in-ear mixes stereo aux buses. You may
need to dial up some FX for the in-ear mixes; these should be separate processors, driven from a separate
mix for each in-ear mix.
For the sidefills, create an aux mix and use the system processor in the console for the crossover and pro-
cessing needed. If you switch the aux sends to prefader, you can use the C/mono main mix to create the
sidefill mix.
Note that this exercise required 15 of the console's aux/group buses.
If the monitor console has all of the microphones onstage, there's no reason why a recording mix couldn't be
made from the monitor console's direct outputs as well.
Don't forget to connect the engineer's wedge to the Monitor C/Mono jack.
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