Silent rehearsal question

[Moe45673]

Last night I had a silent jam, my first one. Me and the other guy both have young kids, so I had to improvise.

Other dude is a very good guitarist but hasn't jammed with anyone in years. He tends to play into an audio interface into Bias FX, or just acoustic. He's not overly picky on gear.

I brought my Boss ME-90, zoom g1 four (for him), Digitech Trio for drums bass, Mackie analog 8 track (VLZ802v4 or something like that), a small headphone amp with 4 outputs (only level knobs), and possibly various other stuff.

First we tried plugging one of our headphones into the aux send of the mixer, but that only fed one ear the signal. So we used the headphone amp into the headphone out jack. It worked fine, sounded good, we had a great time. This can work for 4 people, if desired (or 5 if a vocalist doesn't also play).


Would there be a way to get it so each set of earphones has its own mix, without breaking the bank and with being equivalently portable

 

[itchyfingers]

Good on you guys for finding a workaround with lil kids in the house. I hate playing with cans, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

 

[Moe45673]

He's been very tough to get to come to jams and stuff. I thanked his wife towards the end of the night and she said "what do you mean? I couldn't hear a thing!"

 

[unix-guy]

Would there be a way to get it so each set of earphones has its own mix, without breaking the bank and with being equivalently portable

What's your idea of breaking the bank?

You'll probably want a digital mixer.

My band has been doing this for 7-8 years now. We use it to feed IEMs (except the drummer who uses headphones) but headphones will work, too.

For best results, you'll need something with 8-10 aux outputs. That gets you 4-5 stereo outputs so each person can get their own mix.

We use a Mackie DL32-R. Others use the Behringer X32 or X18, although I'm not sure how many outputs those have. There are some others but the costs get higher...

Typical setup gives everyone the option to use a tablet or phone to control their individual mixes.

My band is all Fractal for guitars and bass/Stick and Electronic drums (Alesis Strike).

 

[MadMaxG79]

Last night I had a silent jam, my first one. Me and the other guy both have young kids, so I had to improvise.

Other dude is a very good guitarist but hasn't jammed with anyone in years. He tends to play into an audio interface into Bias FX, or just acoustic. He's not overly picky on gear.

I brought my Boss ME-90, zoom g1 four (for him), Digitech Trio for drums bass, Mackie analog 8 track (VLZ802v4 or something like that), a small headphone amp with 4 outputs (only level knobs), and possibly various other stuff.

First we tried plugging one of our headphones into the aux send of the mixer, but that only fed one ear the signal. So we used the headphone amp into the headphone out jack. It worked fine, sounded good, we had a great time. This can work for 4 people, if desired (or 5 if a vocalist doesn't also play).


Would there be a way to get it so each set of earphones has its own mix, without breaking the bank and with being equivalently portable

What's your idea of breaking the bank?

You'll probably want a digital mixer.

My band has been doing this for 7-8 years now. We use it to feed IEMs (except the drummer who uses headphones) but headphones will work, too.

For best results, you'll need something with 8-10 aux outputs. That gets you 4-5 stereo outputs so each person can get their own mix.

We use a Mackie DL32-R. Others use the Behringer X32 or X18, although I'm not sure how many outputs those have. There are some others but the costs get higher...

Typical setup gives everyone the option to use a tablet or phone to control their individual mixes.

My band is all Fractal for guitars and bass/Stick and Electronic drums (Alesis Strike).

Yeah, we've been into the digital mixer stuff for going on 15 years now. Last couple of years with the Zoom Livetrak L20 and we couldn't be happier.

For a short while we were using the TC-Helicon Blender which in all honesty sounds perfect for the situation you mention. It wasn't really cut out for a full band mix with live drums that fed into a seperate mixer and from there to the Blender, it would just compress everything a bit too much. But for portability and just doing small jam sessions it really can't be beat. Unfortunately I think it's discontinued but maybe you could find one used.