HEADPHONES, Monitors & PFL, Monitoring, Option

PRO MIXER DX1000

7. HEADPHONES, MONITORS & PFL

7.1 Monitoring

A separate stereo MONITOR output is provided. Level is controlled by a single 60 mm MONITOR stereo fader . The monitor signal is taken directly from the main mix. Engaging PFL anywhere on the board changes the monitor source to PFL.

+Main fader adjustments will not affect the level of the monitor output—unlike on standard recording consoles where monitor follows the main faders.

7.1.1 PFL in the studio

In a studio setup, the monitor output is normally sent to an amplifier driving a pair of speakers facing the operator. (The main output might feed a tape recorder (recording studio) or transmission line (broadcast studio)). In the studio environment PFL (Pre-Fader-Listen) is the preferred way to set up an individual channel. Depressing a channel’s PFL button cancels the mix from the monitor output and replaces it with that channel’s signal. Now the DJ or engineer can hear in isolation what’s going on in one (or more) channel(s), via headphones or the monitor speakers. During PFL channel level is sent to the PFL meter to enable accurate gain setting.

7.1.2 PFL in the club

In a club the main output would normally drive the house PA, while the monitor output could offer foldback into the DJ area, usually via a separate amp and speaker(s). In the club environment, things get messy. You can’t hear any sound in isolation, either on a foldback system or headphones, because both are to some extent drowned out by the main PA system. You should, however, be able to hear the PFL signal loud enough to detect the beat, cue starts etc. What you can’t do is to judge by ear exactly what level the next track will come in at. For that you must use your eyes and the highly-accurate bargraph meters.

+PFL is in stereo: if you PFL a stereo channel you will hear it in stereo even though there is only one PFL bargraph meter. If a mono channel is PFL-ed, you will hear it according to the position of the channel PAN. This is a professional feature and called “Solo-In-Place” in big recording consoles.

7.2 Headphones—read carefully—this is tricky!

The PHONES section lies to the far right hand side of the DX1000, below the headphones stereo jack socket

. LEVEL controls headphones level. Right, that’s the easy bit explained. Now pay attention.

OPTION 1:

The PHONES output can have as its source either PFL or Main mix selected by the MAIN/PFL switch . When this switch is down, headphones follow the same logic as monitor, i.e. main mix unless any channel has PFL engaged. When it is up, headphones audition PFL only, i.e. if no channel’s PFL is engaged, the heaphones will fall silent. (NOTE: SPLIT switch is UP here)

OPTION 2:

Depressing the SPLIT switch disables the PFL/MAIN switch, activating instead the BALANCE control . The headphones mix is now in mono instead of stereo as previously, and BALANCE controls the blend of the PFL and MAIN mix signals. This gives you the interesting possibility of hearing both the outgoing (MAIN) and incoming (PFL) tracks simultaneously through a single output, via your headphones. The same signal can be heard at the monitor output so long as the PHONES TO MONITOR button , sited above the MONITOR fader, is de- pressed. (PHONES TO MONITOR forces the monitor output to follow the headphones.)

7.3 Permanent PFL—using PFL as a listening subgroup

We have seen that with both the PHONES TO MONITOR and PFL/MAIN switches depressed your monitor output is always looking at PFL, not switching automatically between PFL and the main mix. Now you can actually use the stereo PFL bus as a subgroup with its own stereo output (the MONITOR output).

7. HEADPHONES, MONITORS & PFL