PQ Assignments

Since I’ve recently covered my love affair with Digidesign’s PQ mixers, I thought it might be interesting to go through how our PQ monitor channels (which could be used for ears or a wedge mix) are setup. Each PQ mixer has a choice from the following sources:

• Kick (direct off channel)
• Wedge Drum Mix (Mono Aux – Snare & Hat with a little bit of toms if necessary)
• Stereo Drum Mix (Stereo Aux – for ears)
• Bass (direct off clean channel)
• Guitar 1 (direct off channel – mono)
• Guitar 2 (direct off channel – mono)
• Keys Submix (Mono Aux, includes verb for piano)
• VOX 1 (could be a mono Aux submix of lead vocal mics for the day or a direct of single channel)
• VOX 2 (could be a mono Aux submix of BGV mics for the day or a direct of single channel
• Click (submix of drummer’s Dr Beat and click channels from ProTools & VTR)
• Track/Loop
• Extras Stereo Mix (ambience, speaker mics, playback – basically everything else that artist would want to hear when they aren’t playing so they’re still connected to what’s going on.

As you can see, I have to dedicate 12 auxes to monitor functions in addition to the PQ mixers in order to execute the above configuration. My auxes are setup like this…

• Aux 1 – VOX Verb
• Aux 2 – VOX Delay
• Aux 3 – Band FX (generic bus for specialty effects)
• Aux 4 – Talk (this is for various talkback stuff from comm to get to the wedges since it gets to ears down the extras aux mix. This means this aux is only used for wedge mix PQs)
• Aux 5/6 – Vocals Submix 1 & 2 (sometimes used, sometimes not. Depends on the vocal configuration for the day)
• Aux 7/8 – Band Submix 1 & 2 (used to submix multiple inputs for an artist to 1 PQ channel. Ex: acoustic & electric.)
• Aux 9/10 – Stereo Drum Submix
• Aux 11 – Wedge Drum Submix
• Aux 12 – Keys Submix
• Aux 13/14 – Stereo Extras Submix (ambience, playback, speaker mics, talkback from comm)
• Aux 15 – Click submix
• Aux 16 – Feed to Subwoofers

Looking at the assignments, one obvious question is how do I survive with only three aux dedicated to effects? Pretty easy actually. The trick is to make more use of direct outs or inserts to feed specific effects for any case where a single channel is the only thing feeding the effect. For example, the snare and piano verbs are fed direct off their channel. If I need an acoustic verb, also fed direct. Once you include this in the equation, I now have 8-10 discreet effects busses available, plus the 14 submix auxes and 8 PQ monitor mixers.

Again, if there’s questions, please ask away!