hello again and welcome back to the channel. i thought for this episode we would take an overview look at the behringer xr18 and the midas mr18. a walkthrough from the front panel connections all the way through the outputs. the features, and the faux pas. on that note let's start with the ethernet connector. ethernet is for control software. no audio passes through here. you can hardwire your computer directly here, or you can use the wi-fi to connect with your computer or tablet. and that brings us to the faux pas: don't ever count on the built-in wi-fi for anything important. there are two kinds of xr18 users- those that have had the built-in wi-fi failed them at a gig, and those that will have the built-in wi-fi them at a gig. it's just not very robust and when you're in a heavy cell use place, like a packed gig, the wi-fi gets overwhelmed. basically the built-in wi-fi will fail you when you need it most. the answer is simple: just add an external dual band router. any decent dual band router will serve you much better. i'm using an asus rtn 56u with mine. with an external router for your wi-fi you'll also have an extra port so that you can connect a computer via hardwire for redundancy if you want. then we have the midi ports. most users won't be using these for live situations but I will put a link in the text below to a midi implementation chart for the xr18 (and MR18). next to that we have the usb connector. this is where you connect the computer for transferring audio. this could be for playing back tracks from a computer, or recording your shows to multitrack. this is how you would connect for things like a virtual soundcheck, or using the xr18 or mr18 for a usb audio interface for your DAW. next, we have the ultranet connector. this is not the same as the aes50 ports on an x32. you can't use the xr18 as an external preamp for an x32. you use Ultranet to feed things like the behringer p16 personal monitor setup, and other music tribe ultranet equipped gear. below that we have our 16 xlr inputs and our two quarter inch aux inputs. all 16 xlr inputs are multiple connector style inputs and accept quarter inch inputs as well as xlr inputs. the quarter inch inputs on channel 1 and 2 are actually high impedance inputs and you can directly connect a bass guitar or acoustic guitar there without a di. that said if your instrument cable needs to be much beyond 20 feet, I would still recommend using a DI and an xlr cable into the xr18. the longer a standard quarter inch instrument cable is, the more susceptible to noise it is. the two quarter inch aux in inputs are typically used for an mp3 player for walk-in music and break music. below all of these we have our six xlr aux outputs. these would be where you'd connect your stage monitors typically. these could also be for a recording feed or a stream feed... if you're not using usb for those feeds. for stereo outputs, like you might use for in-ear monitors, we'd use a pair of these xlr outs. And you can link the outputs within the software. to the right of these outputs we have our main left and right output for our front of house speakers. and lastly we have a headphone jack, and a volume control, where the engineer can solo and listen to channels and mixes. let's take a look at the x-air edit software. this area is where you'll connect with your computer and set up some of the options. if you load mixer to pc then when the two devices connect the last settings from the xr18 will be loaded into the xr edit software. if you load pc to mixer then the settings in the pc will be loaded to the xr18 and erase whatever the last show in the xr18 was. always be careful with this if you don't want to lose any settings. use the save option first if you need to! the default settings will get you rolling fine in the audio section. in the monitor tab, it's important to know that these are talking about the engineer's monitoring. this is not talking about stage monitoring. this is what the headphones are being fed and not the stage monitors. AFL means after fader listen. what you hear in the headphones will track with the fader level if what you're monitoring is set to AFL. PFL means pre fader listen. when you solo a channel or bus to listen in PFL mode, then you'll hear what is in the channel or bus regardless of the fader setting. this would be the normal live sound reinforcement setting(s). PFL also means the meter will show you the input level of the channel regardless of the fader setting. in the gui preferences tab, probably the one change you'll want to change from the default is to check the bus buttons 'show bus names' option. this lets you name the bus buttons in the output section of the software. let's look at the channels. when we take a look at a channel the first thing we need to concern ourselves with is the gain control... unless your microphone or DI requires phantom power. if that's the case, then the first thing we need to do is make sure and enable phantom power on that channel. since we're dealing with digital consoles, the meters are in dbfs- db full scale. unlike on an analog console, on these meters 0 is the max. it's the top of the scale. we want to set our gain to hit around -18 dbfs on average on the input meter. it can peak 3 or even six db higher, but we want to be in this window. an important point to know about the gain control is that it's our first point in signal flow that we have control over. everything follows the gain. if we change the gain then we change the signal fed to everything else in the channel. The monitor sends, effects buses, even the house. they all go up and down with the gain control. if you've ever adjusted the gain after setting the monitors, and someone complained their monitor changed, well it did. that gain control change also changed their monitor level. with the gain being first in signal flow, that's why it's important to set the gain first, and try and avoid changing it later. the next point in the signal flow is the high pass filter, or AKA low cut. we can use the low-cut filter to roll off lows below whatever our source can produce. that way the flute channel isn't trying to pick up the lows of the kick or the bass guitar as those sounds wash over the stage. this is the traditional way of removing low end mud from a channel. on our sends we have tap point options. for monitors, you almost always want the sends not to be post fader, but do you want them to get the channel eq changes, the gates and the compressor? this chart shows the different options you have with these tap points. i'll leave a link above to a video that goes into more detail about these options. we also have the option of post fader sends, or making any send into a subgroup. if you're using aux fed subs, this would be an example of a place where you would want a post fader send. a sub group is useful when you want to group several similar channels together for a master level control for those channels. we can make these pickpoint changes on the sends on a channel by channel basis, or we can highlight the globe icon in the right hand corner. when the globe is highlighted, then a change on that channel will be applied to all the channels. these global changes only apply to the tap points, not any other changes on the sends like levels or anything else. the effects sends also have these options but typically effect sends will be post fader. we of course have our eq section, which is basically self-explanatory. one thing in the eq section is this is the place where we can turn on the RTA. RTA stands for real-time analyzer. an RTA will give us a visual representation of our signal and it will show us exactly where feedback is happening. every channel has a gate option. the presets are fairly solid, though it's important that you set your gain correctly in the first place, and you adjust the threshold for your own source. every channel has a compressor as well. really just like the gates, the compressor presets are functional if you adjust the threshold for your own signal. the compressor section also has a mix control. for normal compression, the mix control will be at one hundred percent. if it's at zero percent then the compression isn't doing anything. the mix control allows us to do parallel compression. parallel compression is its own video, but it's become a popular effect where you run a mix of heavy compression, versus no compression on something like vocals or drums... and you use the mix control to blend those two things. in the channel section marked main we have our DCA assignments, our mute group assignments, our assignments to the left right bus, our channel pan control, and we have auto mix. DCAs are another way to group channels. mute groups are simply a way to mute a group of channels. let's talk about auto mix. auto mix is not going to mix your band for you. what it is going to do is give you a major hand in handling a panel at a conference where you have several mics and anyone could speak at any time. it's hard to chase several open mics at a conference. auto mix does that for you. you still have to set the gain and eq for the mics, and the fader, like you normally would... and then you assign the mics to either x or y on the auto mix channel. x and y is really just two separate sets of auto mix channels. you're likely going to want your conference panel all on just one of those options so let's say x for the panel. if you have a couple of mic'ed lecterns in the room, those might be where you would assign those mics to the y assignment for auto mix. auto mix will now adjust those mic levels for you, turning down unused mics, and not allowing too many open mics to be too far open at the same time. once again, it's important that you set the gain and the fader properly to begin with. it's not going to do everything for you. it's a helping hand, but not really automated to the point of doing everything. the default weight setting at zero is typically fine here. next we have the effects rack section. unlike on the x32 and the m32, where we have eight stereo slots, here we only have four stereo slots. but the xr18 and the mr18 allows us to insert graphic eqs directly on the outputs. the x32 and the m32 requires us to use slots in the effects rack for that. this makes the four slots of the xr less limiting than they might seem at first. this takes us to the outputs. if we choose a bus button, or the main bus, and click that bus in the fader tray, that gives us access to the options for the outputs. we have our eq, we have our compression... this is where we link buses for stereo monitors, like in-ear monitors might be. we can also assign the buses to our main left-right outputs, but we wouldn't do that for monitors or a stream mix. we'd do that for subgroups mainly. if you ever notice your monitor mixes are coming up in your house, it's a good bet you've got a monitor bus assigned to the left and right outputs. it will still feed the monitor exactly like it should when that happens, but it'll feed your house too! when you press a bus output button, you can right click on the master section and that will allow you to rename and recolor that bus... assuming you made the gui preferences change like i mentioned at the start of the video. the xr18 playlist link above has videos that delve into many of these topics in more detail, so be sure and check that out if you need more information about the topics that we've touched on here. i've now added a patreon page so if anyone is interested in that i will leave a link in the text below. if you like information like this, then please like and subscribe to the channel, click the bell for notifications, click the affiliate links in the text below to support the channel, and i will see you next time [Music]
