What do you guys think is the best way of using backing tracks live?
What I've done is: I take the project files of our songs, pan everything to the hard left, and pan the project click to the hard right. This way I get a non-optimal, somewhat crappy mono mix of the synths we have. My careful thought process behind this has so far been somewhere along the lines of "who cares, it's live." I'm careful not to hit the limiter too hard because I don't want the click to bleed to the left because every time I'm told after a gig that the click track was bleeding into the PA, it kind of makes me feel like burning all my live gear in a big ol' bonfire.
As the drummer, I operate the backing tracks, and what I THOUGHT was a good system was a Roland TM-2 trigger module, which allows me to play back my backing tracks as .wav files. I also use it to trigger my bass drum since that's what it's actually made for. Last gig we played we had to play without a bass because of certain difficulties, so I made new tracks with the bass in as well. You can imagine how the live mixing guy must have felt, having bass, bass drum click, and all the backing tracks coming into his desk through just one convenient XLR cable, with their relative levels haphazardly set by the drummer of the performing band. He didn't show it, but if I was him, I probably would have felt some disdain and not want anyone to associate myself with the sound that night.
Following night before our second gig, I discovered my TM-2 no longer powers on due to what seems like a power supply issue, possibly caused by an aura of antipathy emanating from the sound crew of the previous venue as a direct reaction to my shockingly amateurish setup. So I did what most bands apparently do with backing tracks and grabbed my phone, the only backup solution available to me. I used a Y-cable to connect it into a small mixer I use for monitoring, and used the left XLR output from the mixer to a stagebox. I thought I was being pretty clever and saved it, but it turns out iPhones don't have the best headphone output money can buy and the channels seem to bleed slightly over each other. As a result, the crowd again ended up hearing my click during our show, and thus my desire to immolate my excuse of a live rig grew ever stronger.
I've been looking at some solutions, and instead of using a phone or an mp3 player with low-quality single headphone output, or spending like 2k on some macbook that would probably get stolen immediately after the show, the best I could come up with would probably be something like this DJ mixer here:
https://www.thomann.de/fi/the_t.mix_201_usb_play.htm
Any thoughts on if that would be good for my uses or not?
TLDR; Trigger module and iPod/iPhone solutions suck. I'd like to have a system that doesn't feel like a terrible compromise and allows me NOT to showcase my click track to the audience. I'd also prefer not to have to spend 2000 euros on this, in fact less than 200 is most preferable.
What I've done is: I take the project files of our songs, pan everything to the hard left, and pan the project click to the hard right. This way I get a non-optimal, somewhat crappy mono mix of the synths we have. My careful thought process behind this has so far been somewhere along the lines of "who cares, it's live." I'm careful not to hit the limiter too hard because I don't want the click to bleed to the left because every time I'm told after a gig that the click track was bleeding into the PA, it kind of makes me feel like burning all my live gear in a big ol' bonfire.
As the drummer, I operate the backing tracks, and what I THOUGHT was a good system was a Roland TM-2 trigger module, which allows me to play back my backing tracks as .wav files. I also use it to trigger my bass drum since that's what it's actually made for. Last gig we played we had to play without a bass because of certain difficulties, so I made new tracks with the bass in as well. You can imagine how the live mixing guy must have felt, having bass, bass drum click, and all the backing tracks coming into his desk through just one convenient XLR cable, with their relative levels haphazardly set by the drummer of the performing band. He didn't show it, but if I was him, I probably would have felt some disdain and not want anyone to associate myself with the sound that night.
Following night before our second gig, I discovered my TM-2 no longer powers on due to what seems like a power supply issue, possibly caused by an aura of antipathy emanating from the sound crew of the previous venue as a direct reaction to my shockingly amateurish setup. So I did what most bands apparently do with backing tracks and grabbed my phone, the only backup solution available to me. I used a Y-cable to connect it into a small mixer I use for monitoring, and used the left XLR output from the mixer to a stagebox. I thought I was being pretty clever and saved it, but it turns out iPhones don't have the best headphone output money can buy and the channels seem to bleed slightly over each other. As a result, the crowd again ended up hearing my click during our show, and thus my desire to immolate my excuse of a live rig grew ever stronger.
I've been looking at some solutions, and instead of using a phone or an mp3 player with low-quality single headphone output, or spending like 2k on some macbook that would probably get stolen immediately after the show, the best I could come up with would probably be something like this DJ mixer here:
https://www.thomann.de/fi/the_t.mix_201_usb_play.htm
Any thoughts on if that would be good for my uses or not?
TLDR; Trigger module and iPod/iPhone solutions suck. I'd like to have a system that doesn't feel like a terrible compromise and allows me NOT to showcase my click track to the audience. I'd also prefer not to have to spend 2000 euros on this, in fact less than 200 is most preferable.
