Question

So I’m in rock band and I’ve just built our first rack. Currently there are 3 of us. I’m the lead singer and guitarist, there’s another guitarist and a drummer. What I’m trying to do is understand how or what else I need if anything to run bass guitar tracks and some in between songs tracks fas backing tracks during our shows and have it be sent to foh and our ears. I’d also like a click just for us of course. I’ll list the complete setup below. My hope is that someone can tell me if I have everything I need already or if I need a few more things and how to make this happen. We’ve played plenty of gigs but we’ve never run tracks before and I’m not able to find a clear path on how I can do it with the setup I built for the band. Also, I have enough audio engineering experience to make the tracks myself as I do use reaper to make the demos for the band before we go to the studio to record so no issue there. I even have one of the tracks already made with a click track.

here’s the gear in the rack and other things I have

-Furman power conditioner, 2 sennheiser IEM rack mounted units, the Presonus 16r digital mixer, and an 8 channel splitter with tails for the mixer and foh. And a ********* p1 for the drummer.

- I also have a Focusrite solo interface and an iPad that I could use.

That said I’m just not sure how to get the tracks from my computer into a form so I can run them to our ears and also to foh. I feel like it’s pretty simple, just need some assistance from a fellow musician who has more experience with this.

Answer 1

I'm currently building an almost identical setup! I'm using Studio One to run my tracks, with the tracks going out on USB sends 1/2, click on USB send 3, and cues on USB send 4. On the mixer, I've assigned those USB sends to four mixer channels.

To get the tracks to FoH, I'm using the main mix, but you could use any aux. I just have everything but tracks muted in the main mix.

As for extra stuff, I found with my previous IEM rack that having all the connections on the front of the rack is really nice, so I soldered up a mini patchbay to get the plugs on the back of the mixer to the front. I also used a bit of velcro cable wrap to store a screwdriver inside the rack - it came in handy many times! If you plan on letting your bandmates mix via WiFi, including a mini travel router can be handy, but you'll want to keep it away from the wireless for sure. Most routers will let you set the TX power, so reducing that can be helpful to avoid interference

I've never personally had a computer crash during a show, but just about every YT tutorial on backtracks suggests having a backup option available. I'm planning on exporting a version of our set with the tracks panned hard left and the click panned hard right, and having it on a phone. The phone is plugged into two more mixer channels. The left channel with the now mono tracks goes out the same line as the regular tracks, and the right channel with the backup click is mixed into our ears.

Hope you have as much fun setting up your system as I'm having over here setting up mine!

R

Answer 2

I tried to upload screenshots of my S1 and mixer routing, but I couldn't for some reason. Ah well.