Setting Access Limits

[Cobra Jet]

After a few problems at our last show I’m strongly thinking about setting some access limits on the mix that I give our sound guy to use. He’s a nice guy and just trying to help us out but does not have much experience mixing. At the last show, twice he accidently turned on one of the mute groups and muted all the mics during the middle of a song.

Any advice or guidance that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. I’m thinking about locking everything down except LR, Aux 1-4, VCA 1-3 (the ones we use) and possible the Devices so I don’t need to unlock it when I want to setup Wi-Fi

Thanks
Mark

[Peebo]

I starting locking the band members out of everything except their monitor mix after the drummer accidentally was mixing front of house instead of his monitor. Wow, it took a few songs to figure out what went wrong out front, then I realized. :angel
It takes a while for newbies to get to know the software and all the different screens.
It's an on going process.

[Rdmitch]

Lock out everything except the LR mix. Also lock the channel id that way the little,pop ups don't accidentally come up either.

[Rdmitch]

I starting locking the band members out of everything except their monitor mix after the drummer accidentally was mixing front of house instead of his monitor. Wow, it took a few songs to figure out what went wrong out front, then I realized. :angel
It takes a while for newbies to get to know the software and all the different screens.
It's an on going process.

That's funny, I have done dumb stuff by accident too. Once I fell asleep while mixing and had my finger on the iPad, muted the singers mic..luckily it was just for a moment.....of course I blamed it on a "power glitch"

[JohnMHoyt]

That's funny, I have done dumb stuff by accident too. Once I fell asleep while mixing and had my finger on the iPad, muted the singers mic..luckily it was just for a moment.....of course I blamed it on a "power glitch"

Uhmm... That's not so bad....   Back in the day, a long long long time ago, I was in touring band that had FOH mixer guy, light guy, and even our own monitor engineer running the mix for all the wedges (before IEMs)... 
It was just an analog board with 12 mixes if I recall.   

Monitor tech guy had something like the flu and he doubled up on whatever meds he was taking to do our show, and had a few stiff drinks for good measure.
He proceeds to pass out as we were doing the final tune of the night. He made it that far....

But, he fell forward onto the console, and when he did so, he pushed a bunch of faders to the top.  My wedge, the guitarist's, lead vocalist's and the drummer.
Amazingly, it didn't feedback too terribly, but it was so loud that I had to move away from the monitor, as did the guitarist.

The singer reaches down and calmly unplugs his.

The drummer was stuck....   He had a sub and an ear level monitor blasting him so loud that he had ringing in his ears for a week, and we feared permanent ear damage.
I was closest to the monitor mixer so I ran over and pulled the mains down after prying the audio tech off the console.

The mains guy said that the level went up 20db out front, and it was already loud.   The crowd went freaking crazy and kept asking for more tunes.

It was one of our best shows ever.   But man, was that loud....

Glad our IEMs have limiters! hahaha

[robmcl]

One of the great advantages of a digital board and remote device access.   My band members are actually very glad to hear that I am locking them out of the FOH and limiting them to their own mon mix...including the fact that mutes will only affect their mon mix.   The reaction is always thumbs-up and "perfect"

By all means apply the same to your FOH and limit them to just what they need (or maybe what they can handle).   Again the benefit of digital is that you can revisit those restrictions as the tech improves and is ready for more.
Luckily restrictions are device based so you can retain full access on your own should you need to intervene.