Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[2FLY]

Yo guys.. I'm considering buying a Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro. The 1604VLZ Pro is perfect except for the headphone issue.

The issue is that the level in the control room and the level of the headphones is controlled by 1 rotary (!) YES this means you can not turn up the level of your headphone without turning up the monitors (!!!). Me and my superengineer friend came up with this solution to Mackies entry for the 'I'm an idiotic moron designer' contest problem AKA 'The headphones issue'.

OUR SOLUTION!!!:

I own a headphone amp with 4 outs.

What if I

1. Put the 1-2 sub out into the L-R of the headphone amp.

2. Send all channels to the 1-2 and NOT assign them to the main mix.

3. That way I can plug my headphone in the headphone amp. Hear the stereo mix without using the control room/headphone rotary (HALLELUJAH!)

THE BIG QUESTION:

If I send all channels to sub 1-2 but I don't 'Instert it into the main mix'does Sub 1-2 OUT still send all the signals to my headphone amp???

THANX Y'ALL!!!

[AlexVI]

I believe the answer is yes, the signal will come out of the sub1/2 outputs whether or not they are routed to the main mix.

This is similar to the old Soundcraft desks where the plugging headphones into the phones socket cuits the speaker feed, with just the one rotary to control 'monitoring' level.

Rather than trying to work round it with the Mackie, why not just buy one of the newer Onyx series (1620 / 1640 etc), which do have seperate monitoring and phones controls etc.

AVI


______________________
Alexander Van Ingen

[brandondrury]

I've been using a 1604 for monitoring in the studio for years.  I've finally gotten enough outboard preamps so that I don't have to use it for it's preamps, thank god.

Anyway.

I'm not sure why you actually read what the console says.  Do what you want.  That board is about as flexible as any budget board.  Just because it says "control room" doesn't mean you have to use it for that.  Actually, I never even tried that now that I think of it.  I'm pretty sure the "control room" tag is put on there so you know what room to put it in.

Here's what I do.  I can get 5 different headphone mixes with the Mackie and some cheap Behringer headphone amp.  I feed the Behringer with my aux sends.

Normally, I monitor through my Mytek DA96, but when tracking I send the output to tracks 1 / 2 of my Mackie.  I have my studio monitors running off the RCA Main outs although 1/4" would do just fine.  I use the master fader as the master volume for my studio monitors in this situation.

I then run Bus 1 /2 to the headphones.  

I also like when I'm recording a quite instrument like vocals to run the vocals through an extra mic into my Mackie and run it to Bus 3 / 4 so that I can listen to their performance through my monitors.  



So with that in mind, the Mackie is capable of 6 different mixes at the same time, 5 headphones and 1 on the studio monitors although the studio monitor mix is not all that flexible.


I recommend that you take a look at all those outputs in the back of that mixer.  You have quite a few options.  

Brandon