Midas M32 Sub Groups

[johnf52]

HI everyone.

I am new to this group but looking for some pearls of wisdom. I FOH for a Genesis tribute that has 8 lines of keyboard inputs.
The band usually use P16s for personal monitoring, but on occasions has to use in-house wedges. Now here is where I am banging my head. I am using a couple of Mix busses for monitor feeds to the wedges. I would very much like to send the keys to a Sub-group and thence to the Monitor Mix bus, but try as I may, there does not seem to be a route for a sub group to anywhere other than a matrix or MainL/R. In other words, you cant send a mix bus (in sub mode) to another mix bus.
If this is really the case its a bit of a flaw as I can see loads of occasions when being able to send a subgroup to a Mix bus as opposed to L/R would be very useful. This cant be fixed by using DCAs etc etc as these are all used for FOH work and clearly monitoring should be as separated as possible.
If I'm just missing a trick, perhaps someone can let me know, otherwise, when someone on stage asks for "a bit more keys in the monitor" I'll have 8 encoders to turn up on each Mix Bus line, the proverbial "smidge" !

Thanks

[Wonks]

Hi and welcome.

I have no experience with the desk, but if it's not possible in software, could you do a hardwired bodge by sending the key mix to a couple of outputs (if you have those) and feeding back to a couple of inputs that can be sent to a another mix bus?

[Sam Spoons]

Or is it possible using Matrix's? I have an X32, same OS as the Midas, but have never needed to use Matrix's so only have a vague idea how they work. I'm not sure but I think that is the kind of thing they might be used for.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Is there a reason why you can't route your monitoring subgroup via the matrix and out to the floor monitors from there, as that is kind of what its intended for?

As it says in the SOS Glossary

Matrix
A facility found mostly in live-sound mixing consoles used to create separate mixes which can be sent to many different output destinations. Essentially, a Matrix creates 'a mix of mixes' since derived from pre-mixed output signals such as subgroups, auxes or main outputs. This is in contrast to the normal console mixing facilities which are derived from input channel signals.

A matrix can be any size, and is usually described in terms of numbers of inputs and outputs, such as 2x2 or 8x8, or 8x6 etc with a level control at each junction of the matrix so that the desired amount of any source can be sent to any output - and it is this feature that makes a Matrix more versatile than a conventional subgrouping system. Matrix sends might be used to create appropriate feeds for disparate destinations like PA front fills, green-room foldback, camera recorders, and so on.

[Luke W]

It'll certainly be possible to use a matrix as per the suggestions above. The routing options are one of the areas where the M/X 32 line starts to show it's limitations, totally reasonable considering the price though in my view.

I'll be in front of one tomorrow, so I'll have a nose around and see if I can spot anything to make things a bit easier for you.

If I'm just missing a trick, perhaps someone can let me know, otherwise, when someone on stage asks for "a bit more keys in the monitor" I'll have 8 encoders to turn up on each Mix Bus line, the proverbial "smidge" !

It won't entirely solve your problem, and apologies if you know this already, but if you hit the select
button on the corresponding mix bus for the "more keys please" person, and then hit the Sends On Fader button, then you'll be able to push up the 8 keys channel faders rather than flicking through encoder pages etc.

[Dave Rowles]

With digital sends on faders means it actually takes seconds to up the level of loads of faders at once.

There's 2 ways you could do this.

First, send to mixbus, then hardwire the output back into a channel. Of course, this loses you input channels, and opens you to a massive amount of feed back if you send the channel to the wrong place....

Secondly, you could use the FX bus, route that through something like a limiter, and then this would return to the FX return channels which you can route to mixbuses. But obviously this loses you an FX unit.

Don't think there's any other way I'm afraid.