CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Pre Or Post EQ? A Key Question When Mixing Monitors From Front Of House

ProSoundWeb: There may not be a more divisive topic in the mixing-monitors-from-front-of-house conversation than whether one should mix monitors pre- or post-EQ. I’ve read numerous discussions on forums and social media with engineers frantically arguing their side as the only valid approach. I thought it would be wise to deconstruct this topic and present positives for both sides as well as a workaround.

1 comment:

Owen Sheehan said...

This article was an important read for me, I feel. Mostly because I have very little experience mixing monitors, with most of what I've done being foldback for musicals, where I was mostly just sending the band mix or the tracks. This, for me, is almost always sent pre-eq in the event I'm using tracks, or an eq'd bus that I then send to the monitors. I always enjoy reading how different parts of the audio industry approach things, because different parts incorporate different aspects. For example, setting up monitors for a rock band and a traditional musical is wildly different. Where one focuses on having each band member having a wedge or in-ears, you won't see many individualized monitors in a traditional musical. For 1, the pit musicians are usually being led by a conductor (this argument doesn't account for musicals with a rock combo style of band), and 2, actors generally need more music foldback than vocal foldback.