Does mixing a mixed mix kill sound quality?

[phantom_killer]

Just wondering, does mixing your own sound on your own board, and then sending it to the main sound man, suck the life out of your mix? If so, is the sound quality loss negligable? Wondering if it is feasible to do this so as to have more control over live sets.

We are talking purely analog mixers here (unless of course the house PA uses a digital mixer). Left and right channels from the band's mixer will most probably be DI'ed.

 

[smurfpiss]

There won't be any sound quality loss, well even if so it's not discernible.

But sending out just a main left, right to the FOH engineer will not give him any room to do anything at all. Are you playing on stage? If so how will you mix the FOH sound? Unless you're talking about mixing for your monitors, that's a different beast.

 

[arctopus]

don't bother, most local live soundguys will take your mix and find a way to fck it up anyway

 

[phantom_killer]

haha trying not to look at it with such a pessimistic view.

but yes, sometimes when its a guy who is not familiar with how the mix should sound, reverb for the vocals are not to taste, bass is either too loud or too soft, and stuff like that.

I was thinking, since recorded music like cds sound okay on most PAs, does the front of house guy need that much control anyway? all he probably needs is to control the main volume and leave the micro mixing to someone who knows the needs of the band or act better. Heck, even keyboard presets that have combinations of multiple sounds (piano, drums, bass, strings) aren't mixed individually by the keyboardist to begin with.

 

[smurfpiss]

I was thinking, since recorded music like cds sound okay on most PAs, does the front of house guy need that much control anyway? all he probably needs is to control the main volume and leave the micro mixing to someone who knows the needs of the band or act better. Heck, even keyboard presets that have combinations of multiple sounds (piano, drums, bass, strings) aren't mixed individually by the keyboardist to begin with.

Playing a CD with music recorded in a studio is totally different from amplifying live instruments. The bottom line is how are you going to mix your band while you are a musician on stage? You're not hearing the FOH sound on stage, thus you cannot get an accurate mix.
If on the other hand you can bring along a friend/roadie/techie to mix for you then just have him takeover the venue FOH mixer and tell the engineer to bugger off.