Hi everyone. I am a proud Voyager OS owner for the last few months and I am finally trying to incorporate it into my band. I’m the bass player but one of our guitarists also plays bass so that will allow me to play more Moog!
Anyway I was wondering how to best deal with the potentially huge swings in volume between patches especially in a live setting. I know the obvious answer is to use an EP-2 into the volume jack and adjust where needed. I have that but the problem is often that from the stage you have no idea what it sounds like out front. Quick volume adjustments from the stage can easily be way out of balance in the mix. Also, it’s not ideal or sometimes even appropriate to just start playing a new patch to see where the voume is at once a song starts and adjust from there.
Does anyone have a good way of dealing with this? Possibly some sort of gain level meter?
Eh… I would if I could but I have an Old School. I have thought about marking down volume settings on my patch sheets but the reality of that is that gain during band practice doesn’t necessarily translate directly to a balanced stage mix.
I haven’t actually used it live yet but I plan to soon.
There shouldn’t be too much of a volume change if you are changing everything by hand, but you could always put a compressor or limiter after the voyager.
You should probably have your own channel and mix of monitor so you can tell what is happening out there and work it from there. You can always get into the habit of turning it down as you reset and swell into the 1st phrase. (If possible for the piece.)
If you have a small mixer that can sit beside you definitely go for that, and before each song starts, mute the channel and check your level visually and maybe even with headphones. If the voyager is your only instrument in it’s vicinity on stage and you’re are just di’ing the output, then the foh guy should at least be able to tell when it changes in volume. You might want to get one of those small 1/2 rack Presonus compressors just to make sure things don’t get too out of hand.
A mixer is a good idea. I thought about a compressor but… I suspect that unless it’s a really good one it will just ruin the wide dynamic range the Voyager is capable of. Thanks moogites!
if you’re recording the result from the board for future use, maybe, but i doubt that the dynamic range would suffer that much in the context of live music.. i’d use one more as a brick-wall limiter, only have it kick in for the worst case and surf the fader for the rest..
Yeah set the compressor so it’s only doing about .5 db gain reduction at your loudest setting when you practice. Then when you are not paying attention live and let it go a little to loud the compressor will limit the output of your hottest signals. Use it as a safety barrier. And in a live context no one will be able to tell if you are using a Behringer or a 1176.
If you’re using patch sheets, then perhaps you could work out your settings so that the average levels are consistent at the board’s input. Your sound guy would then balance you in the mix for each song, and mark the fader setting down on his own set-up sheet so that later on he can dial in the fader level before each song starts. He can then tweak your levels at the board as needed. If your songs segue one into the other, he can still preset the fader for whatever adjustments you make to the patch going in. You can do this ahead of time during rehearsal as he can balance you into the mix using headphones. Of course, this would mean that he would have to make note of how everyone else is dialed in as well. Of course, things are never the same from gig to gig, so this is not necessarily 100% foolproof. However, if the sound guy knows where everybody usually sits in the mix, he should be able to make it work.
Of course, if you don’t have your own sound guy always running the front of the house on your own board, then this probably won’t work unless you can get quality time with the house’s sound guy…
I always put a stereo compressor on it, in my DAW or external depend on the usage. The outputs of the patches are a min-point I think on the voyager, some are load and some seriously quiet. I set the compressors with only some make-up gain and gentle compression, so the loud patches smooth out and quiet ones gets louder. A pair of distressors works fine for me
