Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Protools and the mighty XMon


I'm about to install a Protools rig and the one box I can never remember the correct cabling for is the XMon - so here is a list of the i/o and what you need to do;

CUE inputs: These are the feeds you are going to switch through to the headphone/monitors (typically the booth in a TV suite) - these should be normalled to the outputs of the 2nd 192 interface.
MAIN inputs: These are what will be fed to your surround speakers and so should ideally be normalled to the output of the first 192 interface.
SURROUND inputs: These would typically be the confidence return from a Dolby encode-decode path - so you could monitor how the surround mix is going to sound once it's been converted.
STEREO inputs: Like the 2TR return on an audio mixer this is the switched monitoring return of the VTR (typically) - folks often put the unbalanced output of the computer and maybe an iPod jack on i/p's 5-8.

CUE outputs: These will feed the booth headphone amp and in the case of a music studio any floor wedges.
MAIN outputs: These feed your 5.1 (or 7.1) monitoring system, your expensive Dynaudio speakers (for example).
ALT outputs: Used for grot monitoring - typically a stereo set of speakers (small ones) to test for domestic compatibility - can also drive a 5.1 amp.
TB/LB/Util: This D-type has in and out - an extra T/B mic for example, and the feed to the big plasma TV's speakers.

So there you go - remember that all eight of the D-types can carry eight audios, but in the case of none music studios (film & TV) you're unlikely to have more than stereo cue monitoring (for example).

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Phil, great info here. Thanks for posting this.

Question for you: If I just want a single headphone feed for the control room (I do VO in here) that follows whatever input is selected on the ICON, would I still need to use the Cue outputs? I'm a one man band so I don't really have a need for multiple headphone mixes and I definitely don't want to have to create sends in every session just for the headphones. I'd like to be able to use the headphones for monitoring outside stereo sources while not in a protools session. Currently I have been using a Central Station for my monitors which has a line out feed that I send to my headphone amp. It's source follows the speaker source but is unaffected, volume-wise, by the control room level. Looking for something similar in my new Icon with XMON setup.

The geniuses at Avid have decided to place the headphone jack on the front bottom of the console which is recessed into the desks of most studios so, for me, it's inaccessible. I suppose I could rig some sort of right angled extender cable to bring up through a grommet in the desk. Would that be the best solution?