#aviom a-16

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Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System Overview

One professional relationship that has been consistently strained throughout the years has been between a band and the engineer controlling their monitor mix. It seems like no matter how many shows I've played or how many I've been in the audience for, I have always seen the classic point to a microphone, guitar, or monitor with a thumbs up to signal a lack of volume. The drummer will point his stick to the singer and then point it up and then make a stink face about how the mix is still inadequate. Often times the monitor mix is just fine during soundcheck and then once bodies are packed into the venue and the band gets that sudden adrenaline rush, that mix is going to be very different than what was initially dialed in. Unfortunately the brunt of the complaining falls on the shoulders of the engineer who cannot hear the same thing a band member does. Instead of chastizing and berating an engineer from night to night, it might be time to find a better solution. That solution is a system which allows each individual on stage to control the levels of every channel they need in their own monitor mix. That is the idea behind the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System. Founded in 2002, Aviom has been at the forefront of personal monitor mixing solutions with the help of their proprietary technology A-Net which is a high quality analog to digital audio conversion. That digital signal is carried over CAT 5 which has become a standard amongst many venues and touring artists utilizing digital consoles and digital audio snakes. Mark Meding from Aviom stopped by our offices to show off the complete personal monitor mixing line from Aviom. The overview will show how simple the system is to get setup for control of individual monitor mixes.

AN-16/i

    The AN-16/i 16-Channel Input Module takes audio from the console and converts it from analog to digital using the A-Net Bus. From there take your CAT 5 cable and you will run that back to the stage where you can either go directly into a distribution hub or directly into a mixer. It will receive 16 individual channels and that can come from direct outs, auxiliary outs, or whatever the console has available to it to get from the console into Aviom’s AN-16/i. You have individual ¼ inches with thrus to be able to do any kind of patching. The way you inserted your channels on the AN-16i will be how they’re going to show up on the A-16 II and the A-16R. If you’re utilizing an analog console or any console that does not have a digital inteface, you will need to incorporate an AN-16/i to get the system up and running properly.

A-16D Pro

The A-16D Pro 8-Port Rackmount A-Net Audio Distributor will reduce cable clutter on stage by providing signal and power to your A-16 II and your A-16R. The distribution hub is an accessory item. Its not needed to make the A-16 II function, but it is a great little piece to eliminate a lot wires on the stage. If you utilize the distribution hub, you come from your front of house console, and run a CAT 5 cable to have 16 channels of audio on A-Net at each of the 8 ports. Not only can you distribute 8 different lines of CAT 5 to each mixer, but the A-16 D Pro can also provide power. In the event that you do not want to use or spend money on the A-16D Pro, you could come directly from the AN-16/i right into the back of the A-16 II. The only difference there would be you would need to have a wall wart powered somewhere locally at each mixer.

A-16 II

   The A-16 II Personal Monitor Mixer allows for complete control over the mix of 16 channels of audio without affecting the mix of others onstage. The way the audio channels are connected into the AN-16/i is how they’re going to show up on the A-16 II. You have 16 channels of audio that you can individually mix on your own by selecting the corresponding buttons and turning them up. This device can be mounted to a mic stand or placed close to you. You can utilize headphones, a powered wedge, or in-ear wireless systems. So no matter how you are listening to the system you can control your mix and your mix only and have no affect on any one else on stage. Lets say you have a setup on stage where your bass and rhtyhmn guitar might be on the right side and your lead guitarist and vocalist are on your left side, you have the ability to pan those channels accordingly to have the stage setup reflect what you are hearing in your monitor mix. This is especially effective for performers that utilize in ear monitors. You also have knobs for “global” funciton meaning that you can turn up the master volume of all the tracks. There are also knobs for adjusting EQ with a bass and treble knob. Again these controls can affect each individual channel or they can be used to control the master mix. The recall button is used after you have saved some form of a mix. So if you have a particular mix that works with a specific song, you can call up that preset within your monitor mix. As long as you didnt make any saves along the way, you can use the recall button to pull up your original mix. The grouping button allows you to place separate audio channels together so you can pull their volume or direct their mix simultaneously. Lets say you want to keep your drum and bass in the same group, use the grouping button to link them and adjust your mix accordingly. You also have buttons for both soloing and muting a particular channel.

A-16R & A-16CS

  The A-16R is a rack mount version of the A-16II and the A-16CS is a control surface that will control the A-16R. The advantages of this device is for those that use wireless in ear monitor systems. It would live back in the rack with your transmitters and the A-16CS would be the control surface for the A-16R. The A-16R has a lot more going on in the back than the A-16 II. You have left right XLR outputs, and this would be the output that would go into your transmitter and feed your receiver for your in ear monitors. You have a left right return, a send, you have a mix in if you wanted to bring in some form of click track or backing track. You also have a MIDI in, out, and thru, and your A-Net in and A-Net out if you wanted to daisy chain these. The A-16R can be powered by the A-16 Pro or it can be powered on its own with a wall wart power source. You can also put the rack onstage to control the monitor mix. With the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System you can take control of your monitor mix for swift changes on the fly to make pantomime communication with your stage engineer a thing of the past. Its this ease of use and total control that makes the system useful for all types of performers from bands in venues to performers in theaters and houses of worship. If you have any questions about the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System, personal testimony of the Aviom system, or to share your own monitor mix horror stories, let us know in the comments section below. SLAM!! Transcript

This is Mark Meding from Aviom here at uniquesquared.com. While a lot of users by initially be confused by the concept of personal mixing, Aviom’s Pro 16 personal mixing system is an easy and affordable means of improving on stage mixes and speeding up sound checks. Whether you are in a house of worship, on stage in venues and theaters, in an orchestra pit, on a stage or in a studio, Aviom personal mixers give precise independent control over individual monitor mixes.

The AN 16/i is a device that will take your analogue audio in your console and convert it to digital onto the A- net bus. Analogue audio comes in here, it gets converted to digital over here, now you run your cat 5 cable back to the stage. And however you inserted the channels here is ultimately how they are going to show up on the A-16 II and ultimately even the A-16R. The A-16D Pro will enable you to reduce cable clutter on stage, it will provide signal and power to your A-16 II and your A-16 R. If you utilize the distribution hub, so you come from your console your front of house and you run a cat 5 cable directly into this port here, you now have 16 channels of audio on A-net at each of these 8 ports. You could come directly from the AN-16/i right into the back of A-16 II the only difference would be you would need to have power locally at each mixer. The A-16 II is a personal monitor mixing system. Once the audio channels are set into the An-16/i that’s how they are going to show up here. These buttons here represent each individual channel so these can be set up any way you like. This knob here represents an individual volume control per channel. It’s literally as easy as I want to hear more of the lead singer, I push this button and I turn this knob up. You have the ability to pan channels individually as you see fit. If I just wanted to bring the whole mixer up, I can just grab the master volume control here, I could turn it down or whatever I want to do. If you need a little more kick for the whole mixer itself you can turn this knob up and down. Same thing with treble. You can also create a preset and you’re in that particular preset but you’re making changes here, you’re turning things up you’re panning whatever, and in the middle of all that you realize, man I don’t like the way this sounds I want to go back to the way it was, you go recall 1 and it will bring you back to where you originally started. These two buttons here represent soloing a channel and even muting a channel. Maybe you want to take your bass and drum and you want to be able to pull them up altogether without individually hitting channels. All you do there is you hit this button and you double tap the channels that you want. Now if I go to any of these channels I go here and those channels are now grouped together and I can do whatever I want to do with them and I can pull them up or pull them down. The A-16 R is a rack mount version of the A-16 II. The A-16CS is a control surface for the A-16R. You have left right outs, XLR outputs, which this would be the output that would go ultimately in your transmitter. You have a return here for a left right return. You have a send, you have a mix in, you also have a midi in, a midi out, and a midi thru, and again here’s your A-net in and your A-net out if you want to daisy chain these. This is the Aviom personal mixing system. For more information you can go to Aviom.com but for your best price for the personal monitor mixing system go to uniquesquared.com.

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Aviom Monitoring System at the Alliance Theatre

For this video we took a trip to the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, GA. The Woodruff Arts Center is home to the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Alliance Theatre. It's a beautiful facility located at the cusp of the heart of downtown Atlanta (in case you are ever in the area and looking for great music, art, and theater). For our purposes we visited the Alliance Theatre to take a look at how they have integrated the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System into their live sound installations. The Alliance Theatre was hosting a production of Zorro which included lots of choreographed acrobatics and full use of the theater space. The orchestra members for this production were not placed in the traditional orchestra pit, but were instead lifted onto the right and left sides of the stage with a drummer placed below the stage (for obvious noise bleed control). Clay Benning, the resident sound designer for the Alliance Theatre, walked us through step by step how the engineers and musicians control their own personal monitor mixes for the show's performance. He showed how each piece of the Aviom system worked together to create a streamlined work flow for all those involved in the production. Lets take a look at each individual piece highlighted in the video and go over its functionality.

Aviom 16/o-Y1 A-Net Card

This is a must have for those with a Yamaha mixer. This is an essential piece for how the Alliance Theatre houses control over their Aviom system. If you are interested in the Aviom system and own a Yamaha mixing console, this is something worth including in your own setup and here's why: After installing the card into the back of your Yamaha console and connecting to an Aviom distribution hub like the A-16D A-Net Distributor, you now have complete control over how the Yamaha console communicates with the personal monitor mixing stations throughout your setup. The card will fit into any expansion slot on a digital Yamaha mixing console, and you can even install multiple A-Net cards to expand your Aviom setup however you would like. Each card can output up to 16 channels over a single CAT-5 cable, and with the Aviom AN-16SB System Bridge you can get up to 64 channels on a single cable. The bottom line here is if you are working a digital Yamaha mixing console, and are looking to incorporate Aviom into your work flow, the A-Net card is going to optimize that work flow.

Aviom A-16D A-Net Distributor

The hub that connects your mixer to the personal mixers. The A-16D is a low profile distribution hub for your A-16 II personal mixing modules. The way the Alliance Theatre had this setup was in their stage mixing area as the central hub going from the Yamaha mixer to their other distribution stations throughout the theater. The A-16 D will distribute power to the personal mixing modules via a DC line connection on one or all of the eight channels. This is great if you have the outlets to accommodate that kind of power distribution, but if you don't then you may need the...

Aviom A-16D Pro A-Net Distributor

This distributor eliminates the need to power each mixer individually. It really depends on your work flow here but the A-16D Pro can be an essential piece for being a distribution hub for all of your personal mixing modules. It can provide power to all of the modules and has the ability to send signal to 16 different personal mixing stations. This is all done through a single isolated (floating ground) DC power supply. So instead of connecting separate DC power supplies like with the A-16 D, you can have just one power supply for providing juice to the individual mixing modules. There is also a connection for thru power so you can use CAT-5 to power another distribution hub. It's rack mountable but quite large in size and weight so you may want to consider your needs here before picking either the A-16D or the A-16D Pro.

Aviom A-16II Personal Mixer

Total control over everything you need to hear. The flagship product in the Aviom personal monitor mixing system is the A-16 II. Aviom's latest update to the personal mixing control line is the A360. The Aviom A360 has many of the same features as the A-16 II but with some great new features like adding effects to a mix, the ability to control more channels, and a USB input for storing preset mixes. If you want to know more about the Aviom A360 then check out our video from Winter NAMM 2013. The obvious appeal of the Aviom A-16 II is its ability to control the mix of each individual band member for your own monitoring needs. You have options for connecting the A-16 II to a separate monitor, an in ear monitor system, or headphones. With volume, pan, and basic EQ controls, you can customize which channels you want to hear. You can also adjust how those channels sound without affecting the mix of the other personal monitor mixing stations, even when they are all chained together via CAT-5. If you want to see even more practical applications of the Aviom system in use, be sure to check out our video from a local Atlanta house of worship to see how their sound engineer organizes their Aviom system for a live band. Until then if you want to find out more information, or want to purchase any of these Aviom products, visit UniqueSquared.com SLAM!! Transcript

My name’s Clay Benning. I am the resident sound designer here at the Alliance Theatre. This stage currently we have a production of Zorro. And we’re going to do a little walk through showing how we are using Aviom for all our band monitoring needs on this particular production.

This is just what we call downstage right VOM and what we call monitor world for this particular production. What we've got it is, we've got a monitor mix console here that's taking a split of all the band inputs and then we’re doing a sub mix that’s sending out to all of our Aviom systems. Take an analog split, mixing everything down, and then there’s an Aviom MY card in the back of the Yamaha console that is then sending our sixteen subnet streams to the Aviom. All of that comes over here to our first A-Net distributor which then splits that feed to our three different band locations. We’ve got one on stage left, one on stage right and then the drummer is down in the trap room by himself. We also have a separate Aviom listening station here so any of our deck sound people can monitor the Aviom mixes right here without having to go up on to the band areas to confirm that everything is working properly.

This is our house level, left band platform. Up here we have chairs for trumpets, keyboard, and percussion. What we have here is our band input rack. All the band inputs come in here. Also located in this rack is one of our A-16 distros and that distributes Aviom for the A-16 mix stations for each of the players up here. At the same time they all have video communication so they can talk to the music director who’s actually located on the platform on the other side of the stage.

All the A-16s are laid out the same. We’ve got sub mixes for keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, two different acoustic guitars, an electric guitar. We have some actor driven stage guitar so they have their own volume on here. The brass and then talk backs. There is a talk back mic in each location so that each of the areas can communicate back to the music director. We have a click track that allows for one particular instance to have some kind of guidance. And then a vocal mix which is all of the vocals coming from the cast down to one channel so they can dial as much of the cast into their mix as they would like.

Just allowing all of the orchestra members to have their own individual monitor mix which takes a lot of weight off of the front of house mixer and the deck sound people. Not having to spend a lot of time customizing a monitor mix. The fact that we can simplify the cabling and audio flow throughout, the whole system is really appealing to us. In addition a lot of Broadway productions, when we first got into Aviom a number of years ago, were starting to move that way. Us being able to say, “Oh we have Aviom setup for in house,” was very appealing to a lot of guest designers. We love them because they are so easy to setup and maintain. Just the fact that its pretty much plug and play. If everything is connected properly and powered on, the system just kind of works. Always getting live musicians to synchronize in a live environment with actors they may or may not be able to see sometimes or even hear directly is always a bit of a challenge. But that is the nice thing about the Aviom system is we can remote it to other places and it still allows everybody to play together well. This is Clay Benning at the Alliance Theatre and you’re watching UniqueSquared.com

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Aviom Monitoring System at the Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church

The second video in our series showcasing practical applications of the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System takes us to Decatur, Georgia and the beautiful Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church. Amandla Lassiter (a.k.a. Dole) is the chief audio engineer for the church and was kind enough to walk us through how he integrates the Aviom system into his work flow. Dole goes over the highlights of this integration in the video above, but it's worth discussing more specifically how he, and his five piece band, utilize the Aviom system. Each member of the band has their own Aviom A-16 II Personal Mixer so they can control each individual channel they want to monitor. As Dole notes in the video, the things they want adjusted in terms of EQ are done during sound check. Once that is to the bands liking, it's just a matter of them mixing themselves in terms of what they want to hear in the mix. The Aviom system connects to other units via CAT-5 which is advantageous to a venue, but even more so in a house of worship where you want to have the cabling look as clean as possible to the congregation in attendance. On the stage, Dole has installed the Aviom A-16 D Pro for the distribution of all of the bands A-16 II Personal Mixers. He has also installed an Aviom AN-16i/M - 16-Channel Mic/Line Personal Monitor Input Module which carries a number of benefits. One in particular that Dole points out is the ability to add gain to the channels housed within the A-16 II. This is important for band members that need a boost in volume and works very well in a house of worship setting, where there are multiple sources of sound that can interfere with the band's monitor mix. The A-16 D distributes signal to the A-16 II and the AN-16i/M gives gain control. One interesting addition that's worth noting is the inclusion of an Akai MPC in place of a click track or metronome. The MPC has grooves set up to play along to which gets pumped into the band's monitor mixes, as well as the front of house sound. The bass player controls the groove and can turn it on and off, or switch the groove seamlessly with the touch of a button. This is obviously great for a drummer who does not have to play to a monotonous click, but it's also great for the entire band to be able to lock into a groove. Each band member can control how much of this they want to hear in their personal monitor mix with the Aviom system. So if the guitar player or keyboard player wants to stay locked into the drummer's groove instead of the MPC groove, it's as simple as selecting the MPC channel and taking out the volume. The Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing has some obvious benefits for on stage musicians, but as Dole points out it's also incredibly useful for front of house sound engineers. It's especially useful in a house of worship application where the musicians may not be able to communicate easily with the front of house engineer and even more so with the absence of a stage monitor sound technician. The onus of getting a solid mix for the band is taken off the shoulders of the FOH engineer so they can focus on the myriad of other acoustic attributes that require attention. If you want to know more about the Aviom system be sure to visit the UniqueSquared website. For another practical application of the Aviom system, check out our video from the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA. SLAM!! Transcript

Hello everybody. My name is Amandla Lassiter and my nickname is Dole, and I'm the audio director here at the Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia. I use Aviom system for my band, which is five players. They all have their own personal monitor mixes and they can control the kick, the drums, the snare, the toms, the vocals, the pastor, the choir, the MPC, at any given time. And I am able to add three more stations if I wanted to. If I had a horn section I could add on to it, if I had a keyboard player I could add on to it. So I'm not locked into just five units. So if anyone wants to walk in and play, no problem.

Because I don't have to concentrate mainly on the band, I can focus on the singers, I can focus on mixing for the crowd, the audience, the congregation. I don't have to focus totally on different band members raising their hands, or someone can't hear this, someone can't hear that. When we do a soundcheck, what we do is we go through each individual channel on the Aviom. We make sure everything is there before service starts, and the guys, once everything is there, the guys just mix themselves and go from there.

With the console right here, mainly the system is setup where, I use the mic pre version of the Aviom system. So that way you can get a good gain structure. So sometimes some Aviom systems, people don't like them as loud as others. With this one you can have it loud and that way you have no problem with hearing. As long as you have a good set of headphones, you'll be able to hear with no problem.

The previous system had a drive line snake. I use some of the outs from the back of the console to feed the drive lines and the drive lines go directly into the mic pre station for the Aviom. I have a drum mix that has all the different toms in it, that's just one mix. I have a mix that has the praise team singers. And I have a mix that has the pastor in it. So I feed those straight into the Aviom and they just tell me, band wise, what they want. They say, "well we want you to turn up tom 3 a little bit, turn the hi-hats down, or turn up the first two toms, turn everything else down, or fatten this tom up, fatten that tom up." So that way I give them a more customized, personal, mix. So that way, once they turn up that one channel, everything else is kind of like, mixed already. So everything is kind of like there for them.

My name is Amandla Lassiter. I'm the chief engineer here at the Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church and we have an Aviom system. And you're watching UniqueSquared.com.