Korg Forums

Hi all,

Usually I like to hear my voice louder in my monitor than the accompanniment in contrast to the balanced master output mix for the audience.

With the pa4x there seems to be a trade off since increasing vocal volume on my headphones/monitor will also increase it for the audience since there is only one mix.

One option would be sending the mic output seperately to a mixer and feeding back the aux send, but this requires extra devices.

I was wondering how the rest of you deal with this.

There's two ways around this...

One is monitoring off of a mixer, and using the main outs for PA and the aux outputs to feed your monitors, and run the vocals separately (so you can set them a bit higher in the monitors).

The other way is to use a little inline monitor like a Mackie SRM150 to run the mike through first before it gets sent to the Korg. Set the final mix on the Korg to perfect for the audience, then just start to bleed in a little Mackie until the vocal balance is more to your taste.

There's a caveat, though... Once the final output level is set, DON'T TOUCH IT! If you want to bump up the monitor a hair as you go on through your set (voice getting tired, perhaps) you will end up singing softer and getting lost in the main outs. So if you bump up the Mackie, bump up the mic input, not the final output (which only affects the speaker level) as this will bump up the arranger input as well (make sure you have some headroom!).

Also be aware, you'll now be hearing your voice a tad drier than the audience. This is a good thing for clarity, but it may take some getting used to if you are a reverb junky!

It pays off to record your main PA outputs for a while as you dial in this extra monitoring. Listening after the fact goes a long way towards understanding whether your voice sits perfectly 'in the mix' or is lost or too loud, and showing up songs where you need to balance loud and quiet sections better. Listening while you play just doesn't quite work out so well!