Week 3 Audio Arts - Headphone Monitoring

When I was practicing creating headphone mixes, the live room was in use so I checked the results by plugging my headphones directly into the amplifier in the control room. I successfully monitored my voice through a microphone. As demonstrated by David during the seminar, the headphone mix is easily accessed in the live room via studio 2 ports 3&4.

Thoughts on Headphone Monitoring

• If monitor mixes are to be created from analog input channels then record-armed tracks should be muted in protools to avoid monitoring through two separate paths.
• Two aux sends may be used per monitor mix to provide stereo.
  
• Aux sends should be set to prefader in order that the engineer can listen to things at will without affecting musician's mixes.
• As the inserts on the mackie desk are after the recording outputs, effects may be patched into the signal path (eg a compressor) for monitoring purposes while recording the dry sound.
• It is very important for the sound engineer to pay close attention to the musician's headphone mix so that they feel comfortable and can perform to their full ability.
• The aux sends (and therefore headphone mixes) can be monitored in the control room using the aux solo button for each aux send.

References: Lokan, David - Lecture given on 18/3/08 in the EMU Space, Adelaide University