The Problem; so many of us have home studios these days and forces us to set up in odd ways to get acoustic isolation and often we cannot see the musician in the other room. The dilemma comes about when that person does not have their headphones on and you keep pressing the talkback button and they do not respond so you have to get up and walk down the hallway to see what they are doing and why they are not responding.
The Solution; Set up a small powered speaker in the musicians space so they can always hear the engineer. On most mixers the talkback mic is on a momentary switch so not active if not depressed. You can also do this with a mic with a long switched mic cable ( Peavey 51440 XLR-XLR w/Switch 25' with lo to hi transformer if necessary) plugged into the powered speaker. Even a small guitar amp like the Roland Cube Series could work as studio monitor fidelity is not required. Setting up a room mic in the recording room allows all the musicians to talk to the engineer and a powered speaker allows the engineer to talk to all the musicians at the same time.
John Ebata
Piano, Keyboard & Recording Manager
905.770.5222 x261
john@cosmomusic.ca
