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Author Topic: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer  (Read 23317 times)

Charles Razzell

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2017, 11:07:00 AM »

Check out the Digital Audio Labs Livemix product.  It integrates with Dante and is a very solid system.  It's not perfect but it's very good.  I've yet to find a perfect system.

http://www.digitalaudio.com/livemix-personal-monitor-system/
Thanks, I did check it out. It looks like a good solution, but the pricing may be an issue since we are working on a fixed budget for this purchase without much wiggle room. I was very intrigued by their products though, and like the idea of two mixes on one box to reduce stage clutter.

Charles.
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Tim Weaver

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2017, 01:30:55 PM »

Yamaha's monitor mix app is the way to go. When I took over here at our Church, we used Yamaha CL5's and the Aviom system for monitoring.

We had 2 different A360 systems running in parallel. The idea was, one for the singers and one for the band so they could have different inputs to monitor. That ended up being a bust because when you only have 16 slots to put things, you run out of space REAL quick. After many frustrating hours spent trying to get all the patching worked out, and MANY messed up patches, the former techs just decided to run the same inputs to each system to keep things straight, and easy to troubleshoot. This meant comprimises were made to fit everything into 16 slots.

If you think you'll be able to wrangle "extra" inputs on the 360 system, you are sorely mistaken. Having stereo inputs only lets you run things like keyboards into an aviom channel. If you try to combine other things onto a stereo channel you'll run into a situation where one guy wants to hear something and another guy doesn't and you'll have to break those two inputs out of stereo and give them their own channel on the aviom just for discreet control. It's so frustrating, and it's a giant time waster.

If your band has more than 12-14 inputs to the mixer, you need to look beyond any thing that is a 16 channel device. Remember that your band will want to hear things like Click, tracks, video content, and the preacher too. You can't forget these things, and they will cut into your channel count in the monitors.


When I took over the Avioms were the first thing on my kill list. I put another console in the band's green room just for monitoring. The Green room also houses the audio rack where all my in/out is so it makes sense to put it there. The band runs their own mixes via phone apps. I have 4 IEM units for the singers and the band is all wired ears using the Studio Technologies Model 362 Dante enabled headphone amp. This solution has been praised by the band members as a huge improvement in both quality and quantity. For the first time they are able to put EVERY input into their ears, and they all say that the quality is better.


If I were you, I'd abandon the search for a 3rd party monitor solution when Yamaha has already done the work for you, and you've already paid for it in the purchase price of the console....
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Charles Razzell

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2017, 11:42:39 PM »

Yamaha's monitor mix app is the way to go.
I appreciate your bold statement!

If your band has more than 12-14 inputs to the mixer, you need to look beyond any thing that is a 16 channel device. Remember that your band will want to hear things like Click, tracks, video content, and the preacher too. You can't forget these things, and they will cut into your channel count in the monitors.
We had planned to have a mix-down of the drums on a bus, so that the drums need only occupy one Aviom channel. This would leave us with Drums, Keys, Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar, 3 x VOX, Acoustic Guitar, Pads, Click, Radio Mic x 2, Audio from Laptop, Talkback, (and two spare).

Is this plan flawed?

If I were you, I'd abandon the search for a 3rd party monitor solution when Yamaha has already done the work for you, and you've already paid for it in the purchase price of the console....
I highly appreciate this input.

In terms of costs, however, buying eight of the Studio Technologies MODEL 362 is almost the exact sum of money being asked for 8-pack bundle from Elite Core, including the input module and cables. 

However, I really like the idea of the headphone monitor amps speaking Dante natively. This seems very elegant and flexible.

The human factors issue of having musicians manage their own monitor mix on an iPad/tablet is my concern — I've seen some get it in 30 seconds and never look back, and others... not so much.
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Tim Weaver

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2017, 12:10:03 AM »

You don't have to use the dante headphone amps.

In my specific case we could reuse the existing cat5 we had already run for the aviom system. I would have had to run xlr to each musician's location if I used a regular (analog) headphone distribution system. The cost of running the wire made up the difference for me in our case. It wasn't that much more money to reuse our cat5 and run dante.

I originally planned to use a Tascam MH8 and Behringer P1's at every musician's spot. This is pretty cost effective if you have the available outputs from the console and can run the wire.

My stage setup makes running wire difficult. They didn't leave me any access under the stage.
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Tim Weaver

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2017, 12:17:22 AM »

Also, most of my musicians took to the app right away. I had one guy that didn't own a smart phone, but once he saw the benefit he went and got an old iphone 4 and is using that very well. He is not tech savvy, but the other band guys help him out.

I also have an old ipad at FOH for any remote mixing and my FOH guy uses that to help guests, if they need it.
Its really been quite painless using the apps.

Also, The official count of apps that you can use is 10, but I know I've gone over that number a few times. My drummer and one other guy use an ipad. Everybody else is on a phone. My biggest number was probably 12-13 clients going at once.
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brian maddox

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #15 on: July 31, 2017, 08:23:41 AM »


We had planned to have a mix-down of the drums on a bus, so that the drums need only occupy one Aviom channel. This would leave us with Drums, Keys, Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar, 3 x VOX, Acoustic Guitar, Pads, Click, Radio Mic x 2, Audio from Laptop, Talkback, (and two spare).

Is this plan flawed?

If this input layout worked with your older Personal Mixer system, then i would say it would work now.  but...

I'm a VERY big fan of judicious use of stereo in IEM mixes.  Consequently, i've always run Drums in stereo.  It can sometimes be useful to have keyboards and/or pads in stereo as well as that tends to get them out of the center of the sound image and unclutters things quite a bit.  I used to run my own guitar in stereo in the IEMs for this very reason even though it was essentially mono in the house mix.

Also, i don't see any provision for ambient mics on your list.  I personally find these to be absolutely essential, although i admit not everyone feels the same.  A number of my music team members never used the ambient mics, even when shown the benefits,  they just preferred the cleaner more detailed mix that not using them provided.

So your plan isn't flawed at all, if it works with your particular team.  Or to use Ivan Beaver's favorite phrase...  It depends.  :)
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brian maddox
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Charles Razzell

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #16 on: July 31, 2017, 12:32:22 PM »


I'm a VERY big fan of judicious use of stereo in IEM mixes.  Consequently, i've always run Drums in stereo.  It can sometimes be useful to have keyboards and/or pads in stereo as well as that tends to get them out of the center of the sound image and unclutters things quite a bit.  I used to run my own guitar in stereo in the IEMs for this very reason even though it was essentially mono in the house mix.

I totally agree. But I thought the Aviom solution would allow me to treat stereo channels as one logical channel, so I could (and most certainly would) provide a fully-separated stereo image from the keys as one Aviom channel. I hadn't thought of it until now, but I could presumably do the same for the drums, using one of the TF3's 6 stereo aux buses.

Charles.
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brian maddox

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #17 on: July 31, 2017, 12:45:02 PM »

I totally agree. But I thought the Aviom solution would allow me to treat stereo channels as one logical channel, so I could (and most certainly would) provide a fully-separated stereo image from the keys as one Aviom channel. I hadn't thought of it until now, but I could presumably do the same for the drums, using one of the TF3's 6 stereo aux buses.

Charles.

Yes, that is true.  The Aviom solution will allow you to use 1 channel for stereo sources.  Which allows it rise somewhat above the 16 channel limitation.

It's funny, when i used the 16 channel Aviom i never felt like i needed a LOT more channels.  Just a few.  Including some stereo inputs would have probably gotten me over the hump...
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Nathan Riddle

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #18 on: July 31, 2017, 02:22:34 PM »

I'll just add my quick $0.02.

Personally, I don't like the Aviom 320 setups our church uses.

I prefer the A&H ME-1's my company uses.
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Charles Razzell

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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #19 on: July 31, 2017, 03:03:12 PM »

I'll just add my quick $0.02.

Personally, I don't like the Aviom 320 setups our church uses.

I prefer the A&H ME-1's my company uses.
It would be great to know what specifically are the failings of the Aviom A320 that are overcome by the A&H boxes. Sound quality? Robustness? Ease of use?

Charles.
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Re: Personal monitor system for a Yamaha TF3 digital mixer
« Reply #19 on: July 31, 2017, 03:03:12 PM »


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