Another typical CUE problem is leakage from the headphones into the mic. It can happen with
quiet instruments and loud headphones. Leakage often is a problem with vocals and more so with
harmony vocals. The usual fix is in the mix. We use gates and automation and phase reverse tricks and
plenty of time to try to eliminate the leakage. The best solution is not to record much leakage in the first
place. Try the same methods we suggest to prevent feedback. Less volume and better sealed phones.
Personal "In Ear Monitors" should be encouraged in the studio. Some of them sound damn good. The
only problem is that each musician should really invest in their own set because of health and hygene
concerns. A studio can get some with disposable parts. The better personal ones are custom fitted to each
ear. They help reduce the outrageous listening levels because they seal out much more of the external
noise. This helps the musicians hear and hear longer. They also reduce the listening fatigue that
sometimes makes those last hours so pointless. Just as they seal out external noise, they seal in the cue
mix and drastically reduce leakage and feedback problems. A few hundred bucks are spent on In Ear
Monitors and a few hundred bucks are saved in trying to clean up tracks on a console with gates on every
channel. Looked at it that way, you get clean tracks for free and the musician gets to keep some good
sounding phones and their hearing to appreciate them and your mix.
If you have to use click tracks, "In Ear Monitors" are the best solution. Much less leakage into
the mics and clicks are always a real challenge to clean up. Try a drum machine high-hat pattern with
"swing" rather than a loud metronome-like click. With todays technology of MIDI tempo tapping and
tempo maps there is little reason to even consider a click track. Some project studios still think that Clicks
are the key to a tight feel. More often the click track is responsible for damage to what could have been
a great human feel. Studios either kill the drummers natural feel or attempt to lay down real drum tracks
after initial tracks rather than at the same time. Remember that music can be defined as people playing
instruments together. If it wasn't for overdubs and iso-booths we could record great music without
headphones and these stations would not be as necessary. Feel free to try it sometime - it's more fun and
the results can be worth the lack of effort.
The Langevin Studio Headphone System has a POLARITY REVERSAL SWITCH for
CHANNEL 1. This is meant mainly for VOCALS. The reason for this is that until about 1993 there was
no real XLR PIN 2 HOT or PIN 3 HOT standard. If you have a some older mics they may or not be in
phase with other mics. Many times a mic may not be in phase with the headphones. This means that
sometimes the headphones will be in reverse polarity to the singers voice heard through bones and
leakage. The effect is typically wierd cancellations between the actual voice and the headphones. Only
the singer hears this. The control room is almost always unaware except that the singer is struggling. So
what else is new? One good answer is to give the singer a phase switch that only affects their own
monitoring. Another good answer is for the engineer to set this up either at the headphone station or the
recording console. That way the engineer looks good rather than the headphone station. The subtle
benefit of doing it at the console is a much better chance of absolute polarity being correct. When you
have headphones on and talk or sing into the mic, the effect of right polarity will be usually more lows,
more volume and generally better monitoring.
It is wise to allocate which tracks are assigned to what headphone station channels before the
musicians walk in the door. Things have a tendency to get out of hand if you let them decide how many
channels per musician / track. This is a varation of "MORE ME" that negates the thought of " At least
now we can satisfy everybody" and " This should be an easy set-up". We also suggest that the system
be set up in a way that encourages "normal" mixes. Murphy's Laws as they apply to headphone mixes
is a topic to long to list here. Simple is usually good when it comes to audio.
