Pre or Post

We played a concert last night and the sound system included a 32-channel Allen and Heath GL2200.

The schedule was very tight yesterday and I did not have much time to get the system ready for the FOH operator — which in this case was my wife. I went through the line level checks. Two snakes, a few dead channels, the usual stage chaos of which cable terminates into which channel. Getting the band up and running and then doing a very quick pass on channel processing and monitor sends.

I told my wife that the major task during rehearsal would be tuning the monitors for the talent.

The Allen and Heath GL2200 looks like this:

All during the rehearsal and also during performance, something strange was going on with the monitors. And it did not dawn on me until too late.

The sound system installer had configured all six aux sends as post-fader. Which means that as the FOH operator is making level changes, the monitor changes volume. When we started playing, my electric guitar in the wedge was way too hot. And the volume off the wedge was up and down all night. The drummer, who was using an in-ear monitor as we were playing to clicks the whole evening, was also having issues with his monitor levels.

Looking more closely at the aux send section of the board and you see the following:

Pressing the little button under Aux 4, the one marked “PRE”, would have solved all of our monitor issues. Too many things going on and I missed this one in the setup.

Listening to the recording after the concert and it did not matter. The band sounded terrific.