Behringer XR18 Multitrack Recording

[baustin]

Headed down to the Caribbean with Sol Driven Train for our 10th annual tour. We're traveling with a Behringer XR18. I've got a dedicated laptop with Waves Tracks Live for recording.

Can anybody give me some feedback on how I might want to have the USB outputs configured (Analog, Analog + Mutes, Input, Input + Mutes, etc)? Bonus points for too much information, opinions, real world experiences. Thank you!

EDIT TO ADD: Photo of options that I couldn't post from my phone....

[morst]

Well it depends on how involved you want to get on the mix down. If you want to go full studio crazy, you could record the tracks raw with no EQ or fader moves or even mutes. Then you'll have to mix the whole show from scratch. This sounds very time consuming but if it's your band making the big live album, it's probably what you want.
On the other hand, here on Taperssection we usually try to capture events as they sound, or perhaps a hyper-real version of that, to quote a recent thread!

Post fader will give you the actual show as the sound mixer mixed it.
The fader is last in line, so post fader will be post EQ (that's good so you don't have to re-create the drum sounds for your remix), and it should be post mutes, so any unused channels (maybe a sax mic when the wind player is on flute) will be nicely blank. You still probably want to check for low level noise when you mix down, since the channels can add up when you have that many!


I found a video which shows a bunch of options for the internal 2-track record selection around the 1:30 mark.
https://youtu.be/mdVcoD5HpAI?t=80


Please feel free to ask me more questions. I've mixed bands lots of times, but mostly long ago, so I have not made many multitrack recordings. But I'd like to make more.

[Nigel Tufnel]

Headed down to the Caribbean with Sol Driven Train for our 10th annual tour. We're traveling with a Behringer XR18. I've got a dedicated laptop with Waves Tracks Live for recording.

Can anybody give me some feedback on how I might want to have the USB outputs configured (Analog, Analog + Mutes, Input, Input + Mutes, etc)? Bonus points for too much information, opinions, real world experiences. Thank you!

I have used this exact setup to record festival sets and band sessions.

For festival sets I pull in a pair of on-stage mics, the FOH mix, Audience mics and often a subgroups of vocals and/or instrument mixes. I have the XR18 connected to a rack mounted mac mini with USB and Tracks Live is set to record each channel individually (8 to 10 channels). In post, I drop the wavs into Reaper, time align the audience mics and mix.

This setup pulls in the channel input and gain settings, not the mix settings. You could setup Tracks live to record the main mix tracks or specific busses, but for this I am just pulling in each track "pre-fader" to work with later. If you have your gain structure right for each channel mixing in post is pretty painless.

For sessions I have all instruments pulled into the XR18. Tracks live records the individual channels, not the mix. The main mix and bus mixes are being used for headphone monitoring by the musicians and me.

If you are on a mac, I could probably take a screenshot of my XR-18 routing and Tracks Live settings, but it is pretty basic. The XR-18 is a surprisingly nice 18 channel interface.

Be sure to have the X-Air-Edit app on your laptop to adjust your settings. Also use an ethernet cable (in addition to the USB) to connect the laptop to the XR-18 so you don't have any lag or glitches controlling the unit.

[dgodwin]

With the XR18, when recording, I take the individual channels pre-fader/eq/mutes/fx  I also take the LR stereo out and if it sounds ok, will offer it to the band soon after the show. As mentioned by Morst, it'll depend on how much time you have to do the mixdown.

[baustin]

Thanks for all of the awesome feedback! Open to any and all suggestions!

The band is only 12 channels, so my intent is to grab all 12 channels, maybe the mains post fader (am I saying that right?) and 2 onstage mics (not going into mains or bus of course). Gonna leave 2 channels open in the event that something pops up.... special guest, whatever.

I'm thinking pre-fader for the 12 individual channels so the band can have them mixed in the studio for a live album if they'd like.

Also, I've got the unit and laptop hooked into an external wireless router so the unit can be controlled via laptop, tablet and individual members phones for their in ear and monitor mixes. I've got the unit set to a static IP address via the wireless router so synching will hopefully be quicker (any feedback here would be awesome).

Thank you everybody!

[ScoobieKW]

Welcome to the world of multitracking.

Here is a mix from last summer that I recorded from the Midas M32, your mixer's bigger cousin. All band channels were prefader, as well as my audience pair mixed in post with Reaper and Softube's Console 1.

https://archive.org/details/flowmotion2018-06-08.console1

[morst]

Also, I've got the unit and laptop hooked into an external wireless router so the unit can be controlled via laptop, tablet and individual members phones for their in ear and monitor mixes. I've got the unit set to a static IP address via the wireless router so synching will hopefully be quicker (any feedback here would be awesome).

If you are able to use ethernet instead of wifi, it is a more solid connection.


In General: Note that audio won't be flowing across WiFi in typical pro audio systems, but control signals can.
In Particular: the XR18 has wired ethernet so you can use that for control and likely get better performance than if you use WiFi for control signals. {like Nigel said ^^ }

[2manyrocks]

I'm sure you will password protect your router access. But isn't laptop recording done over direct usb connection on the xr18?

Suggest you do a practice run if you can.  It can be difficult to do a live mix and a good recording at the same time because what you hear in the room won't necessarily be what goes into the recording.

[morst]

I'm sure you will password protect your router access. But isn't laptop recording done over direct usb connection on the xr18?

Suggest you do a practice run if you can.  It can be difficult to do a live mix and a good recording at the same time because what you hear in the room won't necessarily be what goes into the recording.

Yes, the OP is talking about recording via USB. I was being overly general, perhaps.
Excellent points about security, and a practice run, if possible.

[baustin]

Recording over USB.
Laptop and Behringer are hooked to WiFi Router via ethernet cable.
WiFi Network is password protected.

Here's the rig...

I'm sure you will password protect your router access. But isn't laptop recording done over direct usb connection on the xr18?

Suggest you do a practice run if you can.  It can be difficult to do a live mix and a good recording at the same time because what you hear in the room won't necessarily be what goes into the recording.

Yes, the OP is talking about recording via USB. I was being overly general, perhaps.
Excellent points about security, and a practice run, if possible.