Add 2 extra monitors to your M/XR12,16,18 mixer for Free

[@radioflyer2030]

Brilliant idea, fab video Daniel. Thanks so much. For those who are curious, the 2 o'clock position on the headphone volume knob will get you just about equal with the levels coming from the AUX outputs, with everything on the AUX busses set to the exact same values. Or at least that is how it turned out on the XR16 (v1 / original version) that I have access to. Mixer is running FW 1.20, and controlled by X-Air Edit 1.8. This assumes your mixer has "Min" at about 7 o'clock, and "Max" at about 5 o'clock, with little white dots ranging from 8 to 4 o'clock. Also, this is not perfect on the o'scope, but very, very close. Perfect is a tiny bit back from 2 o'clock, and could vary mixer to mixer depending on the volume pot, and the factory paint job on the dots. Regarding another comment, the AUX outs on most pro mixers are pretty hot, they will often drive headphones at a moderate volume. Unscrupulous vendors in my country sell PASSIVE in-ears boxes (that are slightly smaller than a Behringer P2, but literally have nothing but 3 wires inside), and tell musicians to use them directly on the AUX of the PA system. This sort of works on some PA systems, but you end up turning up the channel gains way too high, then setting all the faders on the AUX busses way too high. It's awful, but if you know psychology, people often refuse to admit a mistake once they have become invested in something. So the musicians choose to believe the vendor of the worthless passive in-ears box, rather than the sound engineer (who also happens to be an electronics engineer) telling them that "this is not it's intended use". Point being, you can sort of drive headphones from some AUXes, and you definitely can drive amps, monitors and active in-ears boxes from a headphone out, within reason.... we are talking about a free solution on a relatively inexpensive mixer here, I don't recommend any of this if you own a DiGiCo, Avid, etc. Forget you even heard it.

[@danielkharrat]

You should also pan the busses hard left and hard right so that one bus comes out of the left side of the headphones output and the other bus comes out of the other side. If you don't pan them they will come out the left and right at the same time which defeats the purpose of having 2 different monitors. I didn't mention this in the video but then i realized that it might not be obvious to everyone so here's a comment :)

[@Sushan48]

This video was very helpful, thank you. But I had few questions. There’s no pan option in the effect buses. And I also realized that you cannot hear the reverbs, delays or any other fx in these (fx bus changed to monitor), can you? Please lemme know.

[@danielkharrat]

@Sushan48 yes there's no pan for the fx busses that's why i said in the video to send them out of the normal xlr outputs and send bus 5 amd 6 out of the headphones output Also time based effects like reverb and delay require send and return so if you're using the fx bus for a monitor mix of course you'll have to sacrifice that effect but you can use other effects as an insert like GEQ, combinator, deesser...

[@JTActionFishing]

You can adjust the pan manually for the fx buses by adjusting the volume fader of each channel to be higher on the left vs right to achieve a stereo mix

[@sanmarinojr]

Genius , this completes the hack to be available for 18 channel mixers and be available to be using it 4 way stereo iems , or in my case a 5 piece band with 3 wedges and 2 iems. Brilliant!

[@eddieeagle2364]

Hi Daniel. great video, and thankyou for taking the time to make it. A question on this for the XR12. I have made the Bus 3/4 both pre-fader, yet when you have a channel running on main LR, when you change the channel level on bus 3 or 4, it also changes the level of the sound in the main LR mix. Can I make it that the bus 3 and 4 changes don't effect the main LR levels? thanks!

[@Al69BfR]

IIRC a couple of channels means just two. Afaik you can‘t use an effect on more than two channels, because those effects use their respective left and right in and outs for that channels.

[@FVDaudio]

Something is missing or I don't understand the whole story regarding the X(R)-MR18. I understand the lesser models because internally there are 2 unoccupied aux buses that can be assigned to the headphone output. But it is not the same case with the 18, all are occupied and, reassigning or changing the aux 5 and 6 passing them to FX3 and FX4 to use them through output 5 and output 6 does not make any sense. I already have those post fader mixes, why remove them? On the other hand, returns 17/18 are internally unoccupied and I can assign them to the headphones for the outside world as 2 mono aux or 1 external aux.

[@patthesoundguy]

Ive been doing this for years, works great!

[@lucianocorbalan7056]

Thank you very much for this information is very valuable, thank you for taking the time to think about it and especially for taking the time to share it. Blessings

[@davidandrewebina4442]

this is brilliant! however, the volume control of the fx 3 and 4 depends if there is volume on the main LR. This means i cannot use it to hear click tracks in my iem. please help..

[@danielkharrat]

Yup because by default those are post fader busses. On the edit app select the bus and go to the sends tab and make it pre fader or post eq if you don't want the compression

[@nhormar]

is there chance to explain how you will turn the Main LR as another monitor, a step by step maybe. sorry just a beginner and i’m using xair16 for my church community. thank you

[@danielkharrat]

What do you mean? You want assign the xlr that is labeled main L and main R to a monitor bus or do you want to use your main mix as a monitor?

[@nhormar]

⁠​⁠@@danielkharratapologies mate, what i mean is using the main L and R for the use of my drummer? hopefully i’m going to the right track.

[@danielkharrat]

@nhormar you just mix with the channel faders for the main LR

[@dayummimflyy]

This is exactly what have been looking to do. Except for our church setup I only need 1 BUS (I believe) I’m the mix engineer and we are trying to use the headphone out as my IEM to hear when the musicians call for volume adjustments. Would I do it the same way? Or can I just get a splitter cable and tie into an existing IEM bus?

[@danielkharrat]

@dayummimflyy yeah you can plug your headphones directly in even if it's just one bus. If you don't pan the bus master you will hear it in both ears. Or you can solo any of their monitors and hear it in your ears because the solo button overrides the source signal

[@benjaminlazaro938]

I don't understand, so are you canceling the 5 - 6 aux outputs in the xr16? or are you duplicating it to the phones?

[@danielkharrat]

@benjaminlazaro938 instead of sending them out of the xlr outputs I'm sending them out of the headphones output because you can't send an fx bus out of the headphones output so I'm sending the fx bus from an xlr output

[@benjaminlazaro938]

​@@danielkharrat I still don't understand, if I have the xr18 which has 6 aux buses, and I want two extra, why do I have to cancel my two 5 and 6 xlr outputs to pass them to the headphones, then I would still have the same number of monitor outputs. Unless we are talking about the xr16 which only has 4, in which case there would be no need to even use the fx channels, you just have to assign the headphone output to buses 5 and 6 in the monitor setup. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

[@danielkharrat]

@benjaminlazaro938 you get 8 aux busses with the mr18 if you use the headphones output The issue here is that you can't send these 2 extra fx busses from the headphones output, you can only send the normal mixbusses from the headphones output So from the xlr outputs I'm sending 4 normal busses and 2 fx busses and from the headphones output I'm sending 2 normal busses for a total of 8 monitor mixes

[@benjaminlazaro938]

@@danielkharratOk, I get it! So what happens is that the 2 FX digital buses would be coming out of the 2 XLRs (physical 5 and 6) and the 2 normal digital buses would be coming out of the headphone output! Thank you very much for the explanation!!!

[@jjk9632]

Very smart!! I know I will need this hack some day

[@fernandolcoto]

I have a network for the equipment and another network for the users. Between the networks there is a firewall. I need to know which TCP/IP ports should be allowed on the firewall between the Mixer and the mobile application.

[@jusskaarepere985]

Hi. Is it possible to stereo link fx 3 and fx 4? To me it seems I have to mix L and R separately which is a pain. Thanks (just git the xr18, learning)

[@danielkharrat]

@jusskaarepere985 no unfortunately the fx busses cannot be linked But in mixing station you can create 2 iDCAs for each channel One control the send of channel 1 to fx3 The second one controls the send of channel 1 to fx 4 And do that for every channel It's still not a good solution but at least it's quicker than going in and out of the busses

[@randyro28]

Question. My church is using all the Aux ports already for speakers. In this case, does what you explained of swapping Bus 5-6 with FX 3-4 affect anything? I'm new to this, and I'm just trying to get the drummer and myself some wired personal IEM.

[@danielkharrat]

There's no eq and compression on the fx busses so you cannot eq the speaker to fight feedback Other than that it's just a normal bus

[@Allthewrongkeys821]

IIRC the headphone output is gonna be an amplified signal, not the same as line level. So I expect there’s gonna be a noisy signal when plugging headphone out into a line level speaker/monitor? I assume not a problem for a behringer p1 or p2 if you opt to keep it turned off and don’t have too long of a cable run? Just speculating here. Did you have to compensate for the headphone jack with trim reduction?

[@danielkharrat]

Yes it's an unbalanced signal but this mixer is meant to be on stage so you'll not run a long enough cable to pickup interference anyway And the headphone amp is very clean and it's plenty loud I don't see why it would be noisy other than running a very long unbalanced cable And if you want to run long cables i suppose you can use a DI box to balance the signal if you really wanna do that but it's overkill

[@erikeriksson7591]

Well, if you turn the volume knob to the right position, you will end up line level (not mic level). In theory, the higher your level is, the less sensitive it's gonna be to electromagnetic interference. But ofc you need to make sure, not to use a level that is too high, so it will get clipped by your monitors preamp. Anyway, we are overthinking here. Just power on your monitors, set them to a reasonable gain / volume and while feeding a test signal, turn up the headphone volume knob until your monitors are loud enough.

[@roughinitoutdoors1]

couldnt you do this with the stereo xlr aux sends as well?

[@scandinavianserialki]

Very cool! Does this make the two new monitor outputs unbalanced?

[@danielkharrat]

Yes the headphones output is unbalanced

[@IagoVital]

I can assign the headphones output to the FX 3 and 4 as well, right? Cool

[@danielkharrat]

@@IagoVital no

[@NeiorRodriguez]

@danielkharrat I have managed to create "Aux7" and "Aux8" through the Headphones output, but how do you separate them from each other so that it creates two extra Auxs? Does the splitter need to be Left/Right (white/red)?

[@danielkharrat]

@@NeiorRodriguez you have to pan one bus to the left and the other to the right and use a splitter cable that is TRS plug on one side and 2 TS jacks on the other side

[@NeiorRodriguez]

@@danielkharrat Wow that's what I call a quick reply! Makes sense, Thanks for the clarification! You are doing an awesome thing sharing your knowledge with all of us. Keep it up! New subscriber to your channel!

[@lumbarsupport]

@@danielkharrat I don't think you have to pan left and right, at least I don't on my MR12 setup. It's a really useful feature which I use all the time. A couple of watchouts. In the M-Air Edit app menu; setup, monitor, having selected Bus 3/4 as the source, check that the "MONO" button is DISABLED, otherwise you will get the same signal through both sides no matter what. Secondly, there are several kinds of splitter cable. The only one that works has a stereo output jack wired to 2 x mono input jacks with the TIP from the stereo jack wired to the TIP of one mono jack (Bus 3), and the RING (the middle bit of the stereo jack) wired to the TIP of the other mono jack (Bus 4). If you have one, use a multimeter to get absolute confidence you got the correct type of lead, but obviously testing will confirm. To match the output levels of Bus 2 and 3 the headphone volume level needs to be around 2/3 of full volume.The leads are not balanced but when I need long cable runs I sometimes convert to balanced by using an ART dPDB passive DI box fed by a very short splitter cable. In this case the headphone volume level needs to be somewhat higher at 80-90% of full volume, or you could use an equivalent powered DI box and a lower output volume.

[@HiluluxSon]

Hello there I have noise issue that I wànt to ask for the solution I'm using M32 on FOH, DL32 on stage and HA8000 for distributing monitor on IEM, the diatance FOH to Stage about 32 m. When I connect HA8000 inupt from XLR Output from DL32, than the noise on IEM raise. As known that DL32 doenst have Aux Out unbalance. How to solve those problem with the setting using that setup. Thx

[@danielkharrat]

I'm also using the HA8000 at church the solution is first to have good amount of level coming into your inputs Around -18 would be ideal (where tge green meets the yellow lights on the input meter) Then mix the monitors very loud Send as much level as possible into the bus without clipping You can even use the compressor on the buss to get more level And have the volume knobs on the ha8000 low I found that 2 or 2.5 on the knob is good Anything above that i would start to hear the hiss So mix your monitor busses super loud and have the volume knob low on the ha8000

[@sanmarinojr]

I use mixing station on an XR18 and this trick is great! But now I found out that my reverb/delays FX are mono. How do I make it stereo?

[@danielkharrat]

The fx busses are mono The return channels are stereo

[@erikeriksson7591]

@danielkharrat you are genious

[@kristianf8840]

how can i get more outputs for the behringer xr16 what do you recomend for me? to buy ? if we buy. extra gear u showed on the begging of the video, can we use them on the app too?

[@danielkharrat]

Midas dn4816-O You cannot use it with the xr16 or xr12 because they don't have an ultranet port You can use it with the xr18 because it has an ultranet port and you would assign the outputs in the ultranet page But for the xr16, aside from the headphones output, there's no way to get more outputs from it

[@kristianf8840]

@@danielkharrat :(

[@dionyescarilla6431]

If i assign 5 & 6 to headphone output, how i am gonna use aux 5 $ 6? Well basically this video is for me because i need 2 more aux output on my xr18. Can you please help? Thanks a lot

[@danielkharrat]

You use the effects busses and assign them to the xlr out 5 and 6 i explained it in the video

[@ivarvdw9827]

And if you swap the headphones out with the main LR in main output, you have 8 XLR AUX out...!

[@rodrigomartins9692]

How can i do this? Is there any video about it?

[@andprivat1]

Oh please, how exactly can you do it? There is no way to assign FX3/FX4 to LR 😞

[@jorgeruiz8236]

friend, could you help me do it on an xr16, I have tried but I can't please

[@danielkharrat]

@@jorgeruiz8236 go to the monitor menu and set the monitor source to bus 5/6

[@jorgeruiz8236]

@@danielkharrat I changed it but I don't get the 5/6 bus in the app to be able to send the mix

[@danielkharrat]

@@jorgeruiz8236 the x air edit app? Or mixing station?

[@jorgeruiz8236]

@@danielkharrat the x air

[@danielkharrat]

@jorgeruiz8236 if you're using it on pc all the busses are visible on the bottom right corner. If you're using it on a tablet or phone you may want to edit the layer and add them if they are not visible

[@Velkus96]

The fx mixes are POST!!!! Why did you not cover that?

[@danielkharrat]

The fx mixed are post by default but you can change them to any tap point just like the other mixbusses