OT: monitoring mystery
I'm in a four-piece cover band. We've been having a hell of a time getting good monitoring set up. The P.A. we're using has a single aux bus dedicated to monitors. The theory has been to put just vocals in the monitors, and have each of our three vocal mics mixed equally, so that we can all hear the same mix and can lean in for leads and back off for backgrounds and harmonies, mixing by ear on the fly. We each have our own wedge. And, of course, no mix engineer.
It hasn't worked.
To me, it sounds like our lead gal is way too loud most of the time -- to the point of hurting my ears. In order to not be buried by her, I lean into the mic and sing louder. She says I'm way too loud and to back off. We're obviously hearing different things, so our mixing theory is not holding up at all. My first thought, as an ego-centric sound guy, is that I hear everything accurately, and she's full of sh*t. But I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
I'm going to try to talk them into going back to my system, which has plenty of dedicated monitor mix buses to go around. But, meantime, I'd love to get some kind of handle on what the heck is going on.
Seasoned live sound guys -- what am I not understanding about how this all works? What are we doing wrong? How would you approach a situation with these limitations?
Dave "it aint the heat, it's the humidity" Labrecque
Becket, Massachusetts
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