Talkback system?

[madbutcher]

Right now I have some cheap off brand mic i have in the control room I setup an aux channel in pro tools then feed it out to my headphone send to my live room. then just unmute when i want to to talk. its ok, it works, little annoying having to go click unmute/talk/mute on a aux track instead of the radio style, hold button to talk, kind of thing but I'll live.

For the other side, live room talking back to me. What's a good solution for this? I thought a couple studios I have been in used PZM mics mounted on the wall and it was like built into the console or something. I got a cheap PZM (radioshack i think) and tried that but it doesn't pick up the whole room as easy as i was hoping. And I'm thinking anyway that's going to involve another track, muting/unmuting everytime along with my talkback mic, just kind of a hassle, something quicker and easier would be so nice. Google didn't give any good results. Any help on a super easy system for this? My recording setup is just 2 saffires in pro tools.

 

[KHE]

for live-room talkback, i have set-up a cheap dynamic mic on a stand where the musican can talk.
in the daw, i set-up a reverse-gate which is sidechained from a cheap room mic. so everytime the sound in the room gets loud, the gate closes. works perfect!

 

[bryan_kilco]

Oh man, touchy subject for me

Last time I recorded our drummer, we just had his kit set up in our jam room, very shittily treated. I ran a 50' snake out to another room where I had my computer. It took me a bit of thinking about the talkback system but I finally rigged something up. It was seriously ghetto though. If I recall correct, I had my mic running into the send of the snake which ran out of the snake to a small practice amp (I needed XLR -> 1/4") and ran the headphone out of the amp to the headphones. I forget exactly how I worked it all out but he could here the click/mix as well as me talking and he just spoke through the drum mics. (This was the scary part.....I'd have trouble hearing him so I had a limiter set to kill on the master which I'd enable and disable when he was/wasn't talking. A number of times I hit play and forgot to disable the limiter.....I was seriously ready for him to come out ready to fuck me up.

 

[greyskull]

Massey talkback...
Thanks me later