Manley Langevin HP-100 More-Me Headphone Mixer 2/1995 - 6/ 1996 D-SUB - Manual (Page 7)

side of the mic - behind it if you are using a cardioid pattern or directly to the sides if you are using a figure
8 pattern. The figure 8 pattern is interesting because there is more of a proximity effect (more rich lows),
less room sound, and you can use two speakers in stereo. You can drive the speakers with the Langevin
station if you have a cable with a stereo phone jack on one end and bare wires on the other (don't short the
tip and ring or sleeve). Set up a cue mix with only essential tracks that are very unlikely to be redone or not
mixed. Try to mix in as little of the mic as possible. That keeps the overall volume reasonable. Keep in
mind that some leakage will occur so have the singer be as close to the mic as possible and record thru the
whole song keeping levels consistent. Lastly compression is to be avoided. Save the gates and compressors
for the mix.
Some drummers just gotta feel that bottom to get the groove. If you set up a pair of normal
speakers and send a cue mix to them nobody will be happy. Most studio type speakers won't get loud
enough and the engineer has leakage and a corrupted room sound. Try a combination of headphones and
speakers. The trick to using the speakers is just to use the kick and maybe snare and then roll off all the top
and probably the most of the mids. Set the volume of the speakers by listening to the room and then the
room mics. You will have some leakage but if you set it up right the leakage will sound good. We have
known records made with a good sized sound reinforcement system reinforcing the drums in a live room.
It sorta works.
Another drum trick where these stations are useful is in the mix. We set up a snare drum in a live
room without the rest of the kit. We place a pair of drum sticks about 4 inches apart across the rim. Then
we put an Auratone facing down on the sticks. We mic the bottom of the snare and the room. Then we feed
the original recorded snare into the Auratone. We mix the mics we have set up with the original snare and
smile. The Langevin station will drive the Auratone loud enough and you have control of level and tone
while you are setting up the snare acoustically. Besides you are probably all set up to feed the stations
easily and you don't need to drag in a power amp and a pile of adaptors. This trick works wonders on both
tired sounding snares and drum machines. No one will stop you from EQing, gating and automating this
once you have gone this far.
A similar mix trick is useful on some synths, guitars and vocals. Use your Cue system to send
some sound back into the studio and mic the room. If the room is live you have the instant live chamber.
You might even use the station's built in mic. If the studio is deader this trick may still yield some magic
character because you still get speaker and room sound. You can even drive it till it distorts but watch out
for the station overheating (it mutes) just as you lay the mix to DAT. Play around with delaying either the
send or returns. Delays from a few milliseconds to 60 milliseconds are normal. If the room is not too live
try adding some digital reverb to the sends. The room should add a touch of realistic stereo spread to the
digital reverb. Experiment if you have the time.
The last hint is the most important. If you expect that you will be recording 5 musicians how
many headphones and cue stations should you have ? Probably at least 8 pairs of phones and maybe 10 or
12. Headphones get abused in studios. Oprah could do a program on it. The phones get stepped on, the
cords get yanked, and the transducers burn out. Most studios have a few broken sets in a box or a box full
of broken phones that rarely seem to get attended to. Musicians usually avoid mentioning that they broke a
set. All this adds up to the occasional shock when you thought you had enough pairs. Unless you check
each set before the session, we guarantee the occasional nasty surprise. Do you have a spare headphone
station for emergencies? Did you remember the headphone needs in the control room? Most producers and
engineers like a method of hearing what the musicians are hearing. Some producers coaching vocalists
wear headphones in the control room and sing into a real mic with the vocalist in the studio. Sometimes the
vocalist is in the control room and everybody has to wear phones. All these methods work if you are ready
for them. One place a session can avoid at least one pair of headphones is when bass player or guitar player
play from the control room. Then you probably need real good set of big wall monitors and that's a topic
for another day.
During the mix, don't forget to set up a station and a pair of good or trustworthy headphones
(Grado builds phones for engineers). Because many record buyers only listen to phones this means you