The Steel Guitar Forum

Recently I've been playing live gigs with the stereo in stereo. Well I suppose it's not true stereo as the steel only puts out a mono signal. But the signal gets split to two channels and goes to the FOH as two separate channels. The soundman pans one channel hard left and the other hard right. So it's quasi stereo.

The point is the soundman is raving about how "huge" my steel now sounds in the FOH mix. Next step is to get the quasi stereo effect into my IEMs so I can appreciate what he's talking about.

The splitting of the signal occurs in a Neo Ventilator II so the effect of a spinning leslie can also happpen. But I can't hear that as my IEM mix is still mono. That can be fixed, I believe.

To get a stereo mix in your IEM, the soundman needs to send you two return lines, one for left, one for right. When playing with larger ensembles, it’s rarely possible because the mixing desk simply doesn’t have enough returns to feed everyone in the band two returns. For a six-piece band, you would need 12 monitor outputs, as opposed to six if they are using regular floor monitors.

One way to circumvent that is to have your own little mixing console. People who have Axe FX fractals, Line 6 Helix or Kemper setups often do that. Send a couple of outputs to the FOH, send a couple more to your own console, pan them hard left and right, and then you get the mono return from the FOH with the rest of the band. Just make sure there is no steel in the mix the FOH engineer is sending you: this could cause phasing or phase cancellation.

In your case, if the NEO is where the signal splits, send that to a couple of DI boxes, the xlr outs go to the FOH and the line thru goes to your own console.

Lots of ways to do this, but it really pays dividend when you have real stereo effects, such as delays and reverbs. Otherwise, the stereo-ness of it all won’t be that apparent in your IEM’s. Having an identical signal on both sides is what mix engineers call BIG MONO.

The problem with a (highly differentiated)stereo mix in a live situation is that most of the audience will not be in a nice centered location to appreciate it. If they are close to the right speaker they are only going to hear half. I love stereo effects in my studio with headphones.

Very cool Paul.
When I did live sound I loved it when someone had a stereo rig and asked me if I could run in stereo in the house. I was always up for whatever they wanted to try within reason. In one of the regular bands the main singer and guitar player played his guitar though a stereo amp and we would mic it with two SM57s and pan them about 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock if that's the right terminology for panning positions.
Sounded big! Fun. Not everyone in the audience would get the stereo image, depending on where they were on the floor, but the signal was not lacking in mono if you were off to one side.

I second Alex' idea of getting your own little mixer and blend your stereo signal right off you rig with the rest of the band return mono signal from the monitor console.
That way the sound guy doesn't have to worry about setting up a stereo monitor return.

The band I play with uses a Midas DL32 that has 32 inputs and 16 outputs. So it should be a simple matter of a bit of routing and then sending two xlr cables to my stereo headphone amp. I don't think I need to buy more equipment.

The last couple gigs we had a substitute drummer, so the soundman was too busy to deal with my issues. It will get done soon enough.

Jeff Highland wrote:The problem with a (highly differentiated)stereo mix in a live situation is that most of the audience will not be in a nice centered location to appreciate it. If they are close to the right speaker they are only going to hear half. I love stereo effects in my studio with headphones.

Fact!

Stereo presentation in a live environment generally fails for precisely this reason, i.e. almost nobody is in the center listening position and most listeners are close to one speaker and cannot hear the other. Since most instruments produce a mono signal the "stereo" is all in the effects, which may or may not serve to enhance the sound. As you describe it - i.e. two channels of steel hard panned L+R, your dry signal IS being mixed mono and only your effects stems are going to be different from side to side while the ratio of dry to effects remains basically the same in all locations, and this is why your mixer is happy in that your dry sound IS mono and if he is in the middle the spatial imaging of the stereo reverb is a lovely, shimmery thing.

Just because there is a knob for something doesn't mean it represents best practices to use it. Stereo effects in your ears can be delightful but it rarely serves in a live mix situation where the listeners are spread about the sound field. This doesn't mean that running stereo on a live situation is by definition a bad practice, only that the physics involved require understanding for best results.

Good luck getting your stereo sound in your IEMs. It makes for a more pleasant experience for the player.

I'm an old school stereo player since the early 90s. I don't use in ears, but a pair of several design speakers I have.

The fact that the effect may be lost to the listener doesn't mean anything to me. I do it for me. I sometimes get flak from a band member or a sound engineer but I'm unmoved by any of that.

I've had my sound panned hard left and hard right only a couple of times though and I sort of understand why from a sound man's view.

It's not about having more gear and trying to show off though it's just about hearing what I want to hear whether or not it gets further out.

Running just a 2 channel A&B amp doesn't do it. The stereo effects come from the processors that split and pan the signals. Using different setting for each side and 2 separate design or size speakers helps to add to the effect also for those of us that don't generally get mixed into the FOH.

Dinosaur I guess, but that's just what I like and insist on using.

I run stereo out of my Kemper to our Midas m32 but we only have enough aux sends that I get a mono monitor mix from the Midas. My way around that is to send my Kemper “stereo” monitor mix directly to my Mipro wireless iem rig and take the mono band mix into my Kemper aux in and blend it into my iem that way. Now I’m hearing my steel in stereo directly from the Kemper, not the board, and the band in mono. Works beautifully.