Hello again and welcome back to the channel.
on this episode i thought we would take a look at DCAs versus subgroups...
how they work... the differences between them... and how to set them up on an xr18.
the easiest way to do that is get right to it with the x air edit software.
i've got a basic band scene set up on the console to work with.
so, let's start with the sub groups. let's mouse over to the sends window to set up
our buses. since this scene has buses one through
four used for monitors, that leaves us bus five and six that can
be used for subgroups. if you're using bus six for aux fed subs,
as we discussed in the previous video, then that would only leave you with bus
five. even though that is the decision process
in this example, you can have as many subgroups as you have
unused buses. we'll use bus 5 for our subgroup for this example.
so, what does a subgroup do in simple terms? it lets us group certain channels
through a bus in the console. commonly, it would be
similar channels, such as all vocals or all drums. we would
assign them to a group so that once we had our relative vocal balance set on
the channel faders we could then adjust them overall, all at
once, by just using the one subgroup fader.
another example might be drums where you might have four or more channels of
drums. you'd use the channel faders to get your
drum mix, and then use the subgroup fader to change the overall level of that drum
mix. now, at this point we could do the very
same thing with DCAs, but there are differences with the DCA
which i'll address as we go along. and as you learn those differences, it
will dictate which method you might want to choose
in different situations. so i will start with this subgroup example
so i can explain some of those things as we go along. first, you have to decide
what channels you want to group together. for this example i'll use vocals. now we
need to make our selected bus, bus 5, a sub group... and we do that from
the sends window. in the top right there is the globe icon.
highlight that by clicking it. this will make our changes global. this
way when we make an assignment change on one channel's bus,
all the other channels buses will also get that exact same change.
that's because we're in 'global mode'. the globe is highlighted.
so we can choose any channel now, and choose send five as a subgroup.
all our console channels will then have bus 5 as a sub group.
now that we have a subgroup set up on bus 5, we need to decide which channels
we want to send to that sub group. when we chose the subgroup option for
our bus it took away the bus fader and gave us this icon.
when we highlight this icon by clicking it, it goes from dull to bright blue.
the channel is now assigned to this subgroup. any channels that we now want
in our subgroup, we need to do this same routine for. in
this example it's our vocal channels. we go to each vocal channel and do the
same thing. the global icon doesn't matter on this part it doesn't have any
effect (on this setting). there's a second way to assign our
unassigned channels- instead of having to page through our
channels, we can go back to the mixer page,
like this, and now we can see every bus right here in one place.
our subgroup, which is bus five, just says 'on'...
but they aren't actually 'on' until they are highlighted!
just click each channel we want for our bus 5 subgroup to be highlighted,
which is our vocals in this example. if you happen to see a channel being
sent to the subgroup that shouldn't be, then click it, and it will be deselected
and it will gray out. we still have a bit of housekeeping for
our subgroup setup to go through though. if we highlight our subgroup fader
section in the master section, like this, press button 5, then
the fader... which highlights it... we can then mouse
over to the main tab on the mixer section and click
it. we need to tell the subgroup that now has the channels we've sent to it,
inside of it, to send those channels on to the left and right main outs.
to do that, click the left right button shown here
to highlight it. it should not be grayed out for this use.
we could also pan our bus to the left or right which would pan all the channels
we've assigned to that bus to the left or right.
by using this control we can also link odd and even buses
for stereo here. if we were to do that it would take an extra bus away from us
though. you'd want to do that if you were
grouping channels that you were panning left and right
and needed to keep that stereo feel for your mix.
i'll have more on this when we talk about the DCAs a little bit later in the
video. and believe it or not, we still have a
piece of setup work for our subgroup channels-
on the mixer screen, on each vocal channel in our example,
on the main tab- deselect the left right button so that it is not highlighted on
the channels. it should be grayed out when we assign
channels to a subgroup for the purpose that we're doing here. we
don't want them also assigned to the left and right from
the channel! we don't want to double assign what's going to the left and
right outputs! the subgroup itself will send these
channels to the left and right outputs. the signal flow is this: our selected
channels are going to our subgroup, and our subgroup is sending those
channels to the left and right outputs. the fader on bus 5 now acts as a main
fader for the vocals we've grouped to that bus (subgroup).
...and now we're into one of the main differences between a subgroup and a DCA-
for a subgroup, the channels are sent to a bus to be combined there
before going to the mains. we can even compress this subgroup,
or insert things from the effects rack into this subgroup.
if you highlight the group fader section, you have your comps,
eq, etc. all available to you to use on the bus
before your grouped channels get to the main outs.
it's pretty common to want to put things in a subgroup not just for having a
master level control for that subgroup, but to also be able to compress things
in a group. things like vocals or drums, and the compressor is there to glue them
together just a little bit more. also, since these group channels are in a
bus, you have the ability to send them out one of your xlr outs on the front of
the unit. with standard routing, that would mean our subgroup is
also outputting its signal out aux 5. you might do that if you just
wanted to send your vocals to some fill speakers for example.
ok, now let's talk DCAs. with DCA's, they are not sending the
signals through a bus at all! when you assign channels to a dca, that
dca is more like a drill sergeant just telling the channel faders what to
do. assigning them is easy... either from the channel tab or the main tab of each
selected channel. with DCAs, the channels are still going
directly to the left and right main outputs...
the DCA is just passing along instructions to the channels.
so, unlike subgroups, for DCAs you want the left and right main assignment
highlighted for each channel. also, the channel pans are still panning
the channels left and right in the house. they are not getting
funneled into a group. but all of that means you can't compress
a DCA group. there isn't even anywhere to insert a
compressor, or anything else, on a DCA because no audio is passing
through the DCA itself. like i said, it's a drill sergeant
telling the faders what to do, and you're the general issuing the
orders by your adjustments on the dca faders.
the channel faders won't physically move when you adjust an assigned dca fader up
or down, but essentially that is what's happening.
and for that matter, that is the only thing that's happening.
the xr18 gives you four dca groups, and the dca group buttons on the right
side of the screen here... bring up the selected DCA fader...
using DCA's doesn't use up any of your buses on the console.
if you were to group your drums together, then another grouping for guitars,
another group for keyboards, and another group for vocals...
then using DCAs for this, you still have all your regular buses available for
monitors... a stream mix... an aux fed sub... or whatever
else. at least until you use up all six buses.
but a DCA has no way to strap a compressor across your overall drum mix
for example. you'd need a subgroup for that. this is
one of those areas where the differences in the xr and the x32 and m32 are more
pronounced. the x32 gives you more flexibility
because you have more buses and more dca's to work with.
but with the fewer channels on the x-air, your grouping needs are usually less.
one thing i need to mention about subgroups is there are other ways they
can be used. what i've described here is a typical
way that they get used in a normal band setting.
(but) there are some other uses. that's one of the reasons why there's so many extra
steps to set them up. but that said, i imagine most users
watching this video will be using them exactly as i've described in this video.
meanwhile, there's only one way to use the DCAs and that's why they are so much
easier to assign and use. they're not available to create
alternate mixes and sends... there's no way to insert anything in a
DCA... or anything really even like that, so
they are pretty straightforward. if anyone is wondering how i named the
buses here's how to do that- mouse up to setup and click it... mouse
over to the GUI preferences tab... mouse down and check the show bus names
box... now when you press one of the bus
buttons in the master section... and then mouse over to the fader tray
that comes up... and mouse up to the button at the top of the tray....
and right click it, you get a window to choose the highlight color
and to name the bus. that can help you navigate your console quickly at a show,
and you can name your monitor mixes by actual position, instrument, or the
musician's name. ...whatever is easy for you to quickly
recognize. i hope this information was helpful.
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and i will see you next time! [Music]