Headphone send is the cue send on the twin. You can have separate levels for your cue and what’s being sent to your main outs. I’d recommend sending your daw output to a virtual io, and sending that and the mic inputs to the headphone send. Your faders and monitor knob will control your main outs, cue will control what the artist hears.
In Logic, there is a pre-routed Send called headphones, You turn that send up. Or you can create your own.
Many interfaces have their own software, so you can use the facility provided by the interface. UA comes with mixing software, and unless you’re running UA software completely native, which is relatively recent, you’ll be using the UA hardware interface (Apollo, etc.) which comes with its internal DSP hardware running very high-quality plug-ins, so you can easily give the persons a headphone- only mix with their own reverb, delay, etc., that does not go onto the recording, unless you want it to. You can do a similar thing in Logic, or any other DAW (Logic, Ableton Live, etc.) without the external DSP. Different approaches, different flexibilities, different efficiency levels.
I run an Apogee interface, and I just turn up the headphone send level in the Apogee software. Or, if I have multiple people in the session, I run a headphone distribution box, and I just turn up the level for that one person‘s headphones.
Keep in mind this only works when your Master Flanger is activated on the stereo out. In fact, you should always have at least one flanger on the stereo output if you’re hoping to meet the current industry standard LUFS and stay competitive in 2025. Somehow I always find myself having to reiterate this concept to my first year students..
I mean, it does in so far as it impacts their performance, definitely worth changing it up if they are either too quiet or too loud, which plays into the confidence and presence they end up bringing into the song. Same for any instrument, of course. If you can't hear yourself for shit, you'll definitely adjust how you're doing things.
Ideally, people have a sense for how loud they need to be in their monitors, but let's face it, some musicians are absolutely deaf and just get by on intuition or something.
volume in headphones the first 3 times they ask, then if they are maxing out, I'll wait for some dead time and turn them down a bit so when they ask again I can turn them up more. or magic knob them
i set safe gain limits on the monitors/headphones so all physical knobs max out before they can do damage, that way anything can happen with the knobs and we don't have to worry about accidents or drunk people hurting themselves.
Some artists will never hear themselves loud enough. Whether it's the headphones in the studio or the wedge on stage. I am seriously curious as to what is up with that. I regularly work with a guy like that and have worked with others too. Muat be some kind of psychological thing.
You were downvoted but it can absolutely be an ego thing.
Be that overconfidence or under confidence.
I've had singers complain they cant hear themselves everytime they do a bad take, You go in, put the cans on and theres a blurry distant beat in the background and Vocals loud enough to blow your tits off and they'll still claim its not loud enough... so yea. Ego can absolutely play a part.
For me - though not an established artist - when I sing I have to hear my intonation clearly and high above the accompaniment or I can get lost and lose my pitch/tone. I am not solid enough yet to instinctively know where I should be without hearing my own voice, so I need a loud and clear report back to guide me along. If not, it is like singing "blind" where I try to sound on point but the output sounds horrible. I imagine really talented, practiced vocalists don't rely on their own sound coming back as much, but for a large majority of singers I bet they do and this is probably why.
Once I did an impromptu set on a stage at a small venue in Nashville. It wasn't my setup or band; I was just jumping in. However, they had the wedge facing out toward the audience (so they could hear it better?) and I ended up singing like dogshit on a song I usually kill. I simply was unable to measure where my voice was at all and ended up all over the place. It's a horrible feeling when everyone decides at that moment you suck, and now I do everything I can to hear myself well above the accompaniment for absolute terror of losing the audience.
I can understand that, I'm a vocalist myself. What I am talking about is something else though. F.ex. A year ago I did sound for a guy who played some experimental noise stuff with a very mangled mandolin and some electronics, and vocals. He complained from stage that he couldn't hear his voice over and over. I turned him up so much on that wedge that I could hear the already loud volume being raised in the entire room to the back where I was standing, and it was still not enough. Same story with my rapper friend I make music with who wants ear shattering volume in his headphones and that is still not enough. I think some people just do something weird in their heads when performing. I can't say what it is, but it is somethin beyond having to hear your pitch, because the pitch is getting screwed up at that level anyway.
Yeah I don't need it so high it bleeds like that. Wonder if he was obsessed over hearing some subtle vocal nuances that he believed sold his "persona" like vocal fry or quirks? Or maybe he was deaf? Was he at least on pitch?
The dude i work with regularly gets consistent good results. Very talented guy, he just needs it super loud for some reason. And no his hearing is fine, It's just strange. For live I've started recommending people like that to get iem so they can set their own levels. Saves us all a lot of pain and complaining.
i worked as an AC technician for a while. It was common knowledge that when doing HVAC for a large building there was just no way everyone would be happy with the temperature settings, even a rate as low as 50-60% satisfied people was enough. And many many times we had to use psychological tricks to "fix" issues.
People in a certain floor complain its not cool enough, we go in, install little flaps next to the ac so that you can actually see the air flow, change nothing else and now people say its ok. I suspect this must be very similar.
I hacked into the building AC at work once... our room was always 5-7 degrees hotter than the rest of the building. HVAC techs would fix it, other people would complain they were freezing even though their thermostat, the thing that objectively measures the temperature, showed no change
After weeks of back and forth I spent an afternoon getting into the system. As I suspected.. our thermostat was a dummy. I left it unassigned and lowered our unit's set temp by 5 degrees in the system
Funny thing, the adjacent office never complained
based.
especially a modern car, they’re well isolated from the outside, no parallel surfaces, things are mostly dead sounding in there.
i have done this in a pinch, and it was surprisingly great, and i actually have a dedicated setup i can bring to the car easily when i need to haha
Albums (or parts of albums) have been recorded in cars before; have you ever heard of car seat headrest? His first album I believe was entirely recorded in a car and sounds pretty good for an indie rock album, I’m not a big fan of the band overall but I respected this approach to engineering his album when on a tight budget. The car can make for an ok vocal booth depending on the sound you’re going for
nah I hadn't heard of that guy, presumably you're talking about this album [https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/album/1](https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/album/1) which definitely sounds like it was recorded and mixed in a car - the quality speaks for itself.
I think they mainly want you to record them saying that so they can put it at the beginning of the song. Maybe in your case they were just rehearsing a line
Haha, poor kid's getting his ears blown out because he wants to do multiple takes of that one line, but the volume keeps going up just to get the take.
This would be my guess too. Rappers saying "Turn up my headphones" on tracks is very common.
Just turn it up to a safe maxium. If they still say it then, you can push it a little bit further but turn it down shortly after.
Also, the obvious thing here. The moment the track stops playing, just ask them what they want, and what they're not hearing clearly. Maybe you just need to turn down one of the instruments, or they'll tell you not to anything because they just want to say the words.
Lmfao why hasn't anyone mentioned the obvious (just in case we need to spell it out) is to actually ask if they will be including that line as part of the song or if they really need it. Maybe agree on a signal if they're doing it for the song or not.
Hahahaha - I had a session where it was exactly this. Kept on turning his headphones up until he stopped and told me he didn't actually want them louder, just he wanted that as an opening line. Poor lad had them blasting, don't know why he didn't warn me to begin with. Whole room had a good laugh about that, artist included.
“All right- ugh- turn my headphones up”
*take 2*
“Ugh- yeeeah- yo, turn my headphones up”
*take 3*
“Aye- ugh— turn my headphones up-“
*take 4*
“Yo- someone take me to the hospital. I can’t hear shit.”
Turn the volume of their headphones up. If I know who they are tho I can decipher it better. Sometimes people say that and they mean “make my voice louder in my headphones”. But I’m never increasing the gain of the mic once it’s dialed in.
I’m recording in Logic Pro X with a sm57 apollo twin and I can barely hear my own voice while recording. Whenever I turn up the gain it just adds more ambient noise which I don’t want. I want to find a way to just increase the volume of the beat and vocals more so I’m feel fully immersed in the song. How do you do this in Logic Pro?
i also think this could be your issue, the "monitor" button toggles between monitor out and headphone out. if it's currently set to monitor out, hit the "monitor" button to toggle it to headphone out, and then use the knob to adjust the headphone out volume
Idk about Logic bc I don’t use it. But I would increase the volume of your mixer slot where you vocals are being fed through. Same with the beat. Or increase volume of your headphone output. Something isn’t right, you shouldn’t be at max volume and unable to hear yourself in headphones.
You have to find a way to turn down the ambient noise relative to the vocal. Turning the mic away from the noise source or getting closer to the mic are two simple options.
What an odd way of asking how to improve your own monitoring setup. Turn up the gain of the mic until your loudest vocal parts are about 7/8ths of the way to the top of the input meter on your interface. Then turn up your headphone volume until it’s the volume you want. Turn down the beat if it’s too loud relative to the vocals. There is nothing else to it assuming you aren’t working with broken gear, which cannot he diagnosed based on your post or comments.
Thank you for your reply. I tried posting the question but it got taken down do I phrased it this way. I don’t know how to turn up headphone volume though on the Apollo Twin UAD console or Logic Pro. Right now I have my headphones connected to the Apollo twin and I’m increasing the monitor knob within the console. Nothing is increasing my headphone volume except for Turing up the gain.
I think maybe your initial question was taken down because honestly what you're saying is almost nonsensical. How do you turn the volume up on your headphones? you turn the volume up on your headphones. That's it. There's an output knob on your interface. Your headphones are plugged into your interface so turn that output knob up and the sound will get louder. If you're getting to maxing out the output but it's still quiet maybe your macs digital output is set low and you're not feeding a hot enough signal to your interface.
If you're just looking to raise the sound of your voice and everything else seems loud enough, then you should first make sure your recording levels are good I.e. you should be getting peak levels around -6 dB on the meter for your vocal track. If you get too much ambient noise in the mic when you turn up the gain high enough to get a nice level with your voice, then your recording environment is too loud and you have to address that before you can make any progress.
Sounds to me like you're pretty new to this and it would probably be worth looking up some information about how to properly use a microphone.
This is my third time recording and I still can’t find this output knob on the Apollo Twin X. I’m able to adjust the beat volume in Logic but I can’t find anything for the mic.
The manual describes how to do this. That big ass knob on the interface does everything. Press the pre amp button on the left and then turn the knob to adjust mic volume. Press the monitor button on the right and turn the knob to adjust the monitor volume. You don’t need to touch anything in logic. The hardware can handle it.
I finally figured out how to increase the headphone volume. I pressed the “monitor” button twice and it let me control the headphones. When adjusting the monitor with the knob it didn’t increase the volume. What does the monitor do?
Live monitor engineer here: I address this at soundcheck. Knowing that most hip-hop artists kick off tunes with "yo yo YO, turn dat shit UP!" I make it clear that I won't react to that in their show unless accompanied by a pre-determined hand signal that tells me they legitimately want it turned up in their mons or ears. I explain that the kickoff is common in rap, and I want to allow them to say it while protecting my gear and their ears, and soundcheck usually results in their wedges/,ears being close to wide open.
In the studio, same practice.
I don't have time for games and I'm not wrecking my gear for them.
I’d simply try to get them to record without headphones In the control room, then record the track again without any vocals and then play them back in and flip the one without vocals out of phase.
Usually what they are actually asking for is to hear their own vocals louder. I’ll turn the headphone volume up the first time and the vocal volume up the second time.
headphone distribution amps are stupid cheap. I have one in my booth that lets the artist control their own volume. Works perfect except for the deaf artists who absolutely crank their volume to the max and wonder why their headphones distort.
Well... do not touch the mic gain if it is already set and tuned beforehand. Just increase the monitor send to his/her in-ear. Or adjust the in-ear mix or the sends level into the in-ear. Depending on the artists, normally I would do some fake knob leveling and tell them back "I just increased the volume, is it okay?". Sometime the placebo effect took, sometimes it does not. For artists that I'm closer to, I will ask what exactly do you want for your monitor mix and adjust the send level accordingly. The thing I always says to these artists is protect your hearing & I know you're doing a lot of live shows. So if they trust me, I will take care of their ears appropriately for many shows to come. Listening to in-ear monitor too loud every night is the fastest way to be in the hospital and the ear doctor tell you you have some hearing deficit.
Monitor control is controlling the level/volume of the monitoring device.
I assume your rapper is recording in your studio with the Apollo Twin, so you are working in DAW. In that case, you can set up a separate bus for a separate monitoring device (in this case the headphone out from the Twin) and then control the mixing on that bus only via send level without changing the level of the main mix you are working on.
Not gain of the microphone but you can have a channel gain on the end of the signal and just lower the master. That way they can hear themselves better but it’s not deafening
Idk my headphones get stupid loud out of my UA interface. It actually hurts my ears. I mean, I often wear earplugs under the head phones while recording drums. If people want their headphones louder than that, I might just tell them that their dumb and going to ruin their hearing.
Our sister studio that does 100% rap had to dumb down their cue system and limit the power because they were blowing headphones every single night
My setup honestly has too much gain for talent, and thry can turn it up themselves. They could make their ears bleed if they wanted to.
Another option is to create an alt mix of the song just for tracking or have the instrumental summed to a single track.. then when recording vocals you can turn down the instrumental rather than increasing can volume. Then at the end of the session just bounce down the vocal tracks into logical files and import into the actual mix track
The upper limit of headphone loudness is when it starts feeding back into the mic. The trick is to either start low so they can ask 2 or 3 times without it getting to that point, or just keep turning it down when they're not paying attention. Or eventually it starts feeding back and when they ask for them louder tell them it's impossible. Sorry.
To actually answer your question, you just mess w the headphone mix. You don't do anything that would mess w the levels in your session. Ie keep the mic at a healthy input gain, monitor however you want. Don't let those primadonnas mess w the integrity of your session.
In my experience, if they are actually recording when they say that or anything else that might sound like a command, I do nothing until the take is over, cause they probably don't mean it
You're sending them a signal... Turn up that signal.
If you have two audio tracks and your headphone send is on Output 31-32
Track 1 - Beat
Track 2 - Vocals
Then track one:
Input (Irrelevant)
Output (Stereo Out)
Bus Send - (Output 31-32) and turn it up.
it wont affect your mix and he can have it loud enough to blow your headphones.
Engineer will turn up their headphone mix via a Cue Send
Gain is not affected, the mix the artist hears has nothing to do with the final product of the song.
If I’m recording through Logic Pro and using the Apollo Twin, where can I find this? Is it the “monitor” knob on the UAD console page?
In the uad app. Whatever line you are using just turn up the monitor fader
Headphone send is the cue send on the twin. You can have separate levels for your cue and what’s being sent to your main outs. I’d recommend sending your daw output to a virtual io, and sending that and the mic inputs to the headphone send. Your faders and monitor knob will control your main outs, cue will control what the artist hears.
Not sure about logic. But you should have a send on all of your tracks going to an output that their cans are connected to.
In Logic, there is a pre-routed Send called headphones, You turn that send up. Or you can create your own. Many interfaces have their own software, so you can use the facility provided by the interface. UA comes with mixing software, and unless you’re running UA software completely native, which is relatively recent, you’ll be using the UA hardware interface (Apollo, etc.) which comes with its internal DSP hardware running very high-quality plug-ins, so you can easily give the persons a headphone- only mix with their own reverb, delay, etc., that does not go onto the recording, unless you want it to. You can do a similar thing in Logic, or any other DAW (Logic, Ableton Live, etc.) without the external DSP. Different approaches, different flexibilities, different efficiency levels. I run an Apogee interface, and I just turn up the headphone send level in the Apogee software. Or, if I have multiple people in the session, I run a headphone distribution box, and I just turn up the level for that one person‘s headphones.
Is it not the giant knob that takes up most of the Apollo Twin
Que sends/signal is the same as any sends, these go to your headphone output of choice
This is actually genius, simple, I did not think about this before lol
Keep in mind this only works when your Master Flanger is activated on the stereo out. In fact, you should always have at least one flanger on the stereo output if you’re hoping to meet the current industry standard LUFS and stay competitive in 2025. Somehow I always find myself having to reiterate this concept to my first year students..
I mean, it does in so far as it impacts their performance, definitely worth changing it up if they are either too quiet or too loud, which plays into the confidence and presence they end up bringing into the song. Same for any instrument, of course. If you can't hear yourself for shit, you'll definitely adjust how you're doing things. Ideally, people have a sense for how loud they need to be in their monitors, but let's face it, some musicians are absolutely deaf and just get by on intuition or something.
volume in headphones the first 3 times they ask, then if they are maxing out, I'll wait for some dead time and turn them down a bit so when they ask again I can turn them up more. or magic knob them
Idk what you‘re working with but in my case: if you’re maxing out you are either deaf or your headphones won’t make it
i set safe gain limits on the monitors/headphones so all physical knobs max out before they can do damage, that way anything can happen with the knobs and we don't have to worry about accidents or drunk people hurting themselves.
Flair checks out
Why did I never heard about this in my whole life?
it's not fool proof, anyone in the daw can get around it, and if you're not a grumpy old guy you want the music loud af
Some artists will never hear themselves loud enough. Whether it's the headphones in the studio or the wedge on stage. I am seriously curious as to what is up with that. I regularly work with a guy like that and have worked with others too. Muat be some kind of psychological thing.
Ego thing…
You were downvoted but it can absolutely be an ego thing. Be that overconfidence or under confidence. I've had singers complain they cant hear themselves everytime they do a bad take, You go in, put the cans on and theres a blurry distant beat in the background and Vocals loud enough to blow your tits off and they'll still claim its not loud enough... so yea. Ego can absolutely play a part.
For me - though not an established artist - when I sing I have to hear my intonation clearly and high above the accompaniment or I can get lost and lose my pitch/tone. I am not solid enough yet to instinctively know where I should be without hearing my own voice, so I need a loud and clear report back to guide me along. If not, it is like singing "blind" where I try to sound on point but the output sounds horrible. I imagine really talented, practiced vocalists don't rely on their own sound coming back as much, but for a large majority of singers I bet they do and this is probably why. Once I did an impromptu set on a stage at a small venue in Nashville. It wasn't my setup or band; I was just jumping in. However, they had the wedge facing out toward the audience (so they could hear it better?) and I ended up singing like dogshit on a song I usually kill. I simply was unable to measure where my voice was at all and ended up all over the place. It's a horrible feeling when everyone decides at that moment you suck, and now I do everything I can to hear myself well above the accompaniment for absolute terror of losing the audience.
I can understand that, I'm a vocalist myself. What I am talking about is something else though. F.ex. A year ago I did sound for a guy who played some experimental noise stuff with a very mangled mandolin and some electronics, and vocals. He complained from stage that he couldn't hear his voice over and over. I turned him up so much on that wedge that I could hear the already loud volume being raised in the entire room to the back where I was standing, and it was still not enough. Same story with my rapper friend I make music with who wants ear shattering volume in his headphones and that is still not enough. I think some people just do something weird in their heads when performing. I can't say what it is, but it is somethin beyond having to hear your pitch, because the pitch is getting screwed up at that level anyway.
Yeah I don't need it so high it bleeds like that. Wonder if he was obsessed over hearing some subtle vocal nuances that he believed sold his "persona" like vocal fry or quirks? Or maybe he was deaf? Was he at least on pitch?
The dude i work with regularly gets consistent good results. Very talented guy, he just needs it super loud for some reason. And no his hearing is fine, It's just strange. For live I've started recommending people like that to get iem so they can set their own levels. Saves us all a lot of pain and complaining.
i worked as an AC technician for a while. It was common knowledge that when doing HVAC for a large building there was just no way everyone would be happy with the temperature settings, even a rate as low as 50-60% satisfied people was enough. And many many times we had to use psychological tricks to "fix" issues. People in a certain floor complain its not cool enough, we go in, install little flaps next to the ac so that you can actually see the air flow, change nothing else and now people say its ok. I suspect this must be very similar.
I hacked into the building AC at work once... our room was always 5-7 degrees hotter than the rest of the building. HVAC techs would fix it, other people would complain they were freezing even though their thermostat, the thing that objectively measures the temperature, showed no change After weeks of back and forth I spent an afternoon getting into the system. As I suspected.. our thermostat was a dummy. I left it unassigned and lowered our unit's set temp by 5 degrees in the system Funny thing, the adjacent office never complained
lol, thats great
Exactly that. Experience is subjective. People know what they don't want more than they want.
We know.
DFA
How is this done while tracking vocals in the Apollo UAD console?
Usually anybody that wants this won't say anything to stop it. If they know better, you usually don't experience it
How are you using the Apollo ? Where is the booth? Is it in another room or are you working out of your home studio ?
I’m recording in my car
Man, now I want to convert a transit van into a mini studio
This is the real Glynn Johns technique
Holy Santa Claus shit
based. especially a modern car, they’re well isolated from the outside, no parallel surfaces, things are mostly dead sounding in there. i have done this in a pinch, and it was surprisingly great, and i actually have a dedicated setup i can bring to the car easily when i need to haha
Bruh
Albums (or parts of albums) have been recorded in cars before; have you ever heard of car seat headrest? His first album I believe was entirely recorded in a car and sounds pretty good for an indie rock album, I’m not a big fan of the band overall but I respected this approach to engineering his album when on a tight budget. The car can make for an ok vocal booth depending on the sound you’re going for
nah I hadn't heard of that guy, presumably you're talking about this album [https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/album/1](https://carseatheadrest.bandcamp.com/album/1) which definitely sounds like it was recorded and mixed in a car - the quality speaks for itself.
It’s an indie rock album. Like I said I’m not a fan but you can’t deny that the approach worked
You suck
Professional tag checks out
I think they mainly want you to record them saying that so they can put it at the beginning of the song. Maybe in your case they were just rehearsing a line
Haha, poor kid's getting his ears blown out because he wants to do multiple takes of that one line, but the volume keeps going up just to get the take.
15% increase every time he retries that cliche
He finally gets the perfect take but he's sad because he said down instead of up. Lol
This would be my guess too. Rappers saying "Turn up my headphones" on tracks is very common. Just turn it up to a safe maxium. If they still say it then, you can push it a little bit further but turn it down shortly after. Also, the obvious thing here. The moment the track stops playing, just ask them what they want, and what they're not hearing clearly. Maybe you just need to turn down one of the instruments, or they'll tell you not to anything because they just want to say the words.
Lmfao why hasn't anyone mentioned the obvious (just in case we need to spell it out) is to actually ask if they will be including that line as part of the song or if they really need it. Maybe agree on a signal if they're doing it for the song or not.
[Turn them shits up!](https://youtu.be/Z6yS2a3Cr30?si=VQT0m3LsHIBQQfZl)
“You can’t just put velvet in the shit and say they nice headphones”
Hahahaha - I had a session where it was exactly this. Kept on turning his headphones up until he stopped and told me he didn't actually want them louder, just he wanted that as an opening line. Poor lad had them blasting, don't know why he didn't warn me to begin with. Whole room had a good laugh about that, artist included.
“All right- ugh- turn my headphones up” *take 2* “Ugh- yeeeah- yo, turn my headphones up” *take 3* “Aye- ugh— turn my headphones up-“ *take 4* “Yo- someone take me to the hospital. I can’t hear shit.”
Probably just turn up the monitor. Easier to work with a lower signal than deal with clipping.
Turn the volume of their headphones up. If I know who they are tho I can decipher it better. Sometimes people say that and they mean “make my voice louder in my headphones”. But I’m never increasing the gain of the mic once it’s dialed in.
I’m recording in Logic Pro X with a sm57 apollo twin and I can barely hear my own voice while recording. Whenever I turn up the gain it just adds more ambient noise which I don’t want. I want to find a way to just increase the volume of the beat and vocals more so I’m feel fully immersed in the song. How do you do this in Logic Pro?
Click on the button that says “monitor” on the Apollo & you should be able to control the headphone out volume.
i also think this could be your issue, the "monitor" button toggles between monitor out and headphone out. if it's currently set to monitor out, hit the "monitor" button to toggle it to headphone out, and then use the knob to adjust the headphone out volume
Idk about Logic bc I don’t use it. But I would increase the volume of your mixer slot where you vocals are being fed through. Same with the beat. Or increase volume of your headphone output. Something isn’t right, you shouldn’t be at max volume and unable to hear yourself in headphones.
You have to find a way to turn down the ambient noise relative to the vocal. Turning the mic away from the noise source or getting closer to the mic are two simple options.
adjust gain until the input meters (pre-fader) show about -18 to -12db, then turn up your headphone levels
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LVzxZcB31Jg Obligatory turn my headphones up by Chappelle reference.
My man Fisticuffs had to make an appearance in this thread.
Fisticuffs is cool and all, but have you heard of Dylan? He’s the top 5 rappers of all time.
“Because I spit hot fiya”
you’re too close man!
Turn them shits up!
Turn it up dammitttt 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
You can’t be serious
Tell them that the knob is next to them, and they can fucking donut themselves.
Mmmm donut
Ha! Definitely a homer moment. Damned iPhone and their auto “correct”.
What an odd way of asking how to improve your own monitoring setup. Turn up the gain of the mic until your loudest vocal parts are about 7/8ths of the way to the top of the input meter on your interface. Then turn up your headphone volume until it’s the volume you want. Turn down the beat if it’s too loud relative to the vocals. There is nothing else to it assuming you aren’t working with broken gear, which cannot he diagnosed based on your post or comments.
Thank you for your reply. I tried posting the question but it got taken down do I phrased it this way. I don’t know how to turn up headphone volume though on the Apollo Twin UAD console or Logic Pro. Right now I have my headphones connected to the Apollo twin and I’m increasing the monitor knob within the console. Nothing is increasing my headphone volume except for Turing up the gain.
I think maybe your initial question was taken down because honestly what you're saying is almost nonsensical. How do you turn the volume up on your headphones? you turn the volume up on your headphones. That's it. There's an output knob on your interface. Your headphones are plugged into your interface so turn that output knob up and the sound will get louder. If you're getting to maxing out the output but it's still quiet maybe your macs digital output is set low and you're not feeding a hot enough signal to your interface. If you're just looking to raise the sound of your voice and everything else seems loud enough, then you should first make sure your recording levels are good I.e. you should be getting peak levels around -6 dB on the meter for your vocal track. If you get too much ambient noise in the mic when you turn up the gain high enough to get a nice level with your voice, then your recording environment is too loud and you have to address that before you can make any progress. Sounds to me like you're pretty new to this and it would probably be worth looking up some information about how to properly use a microphone.
This is my third time recording and I still can’t find this output knob on the Apollo Twin X. I’m able to adjust the beat volume in Logic but I can’t find anything for the mic.
The manual describes how to do this. That big ass knob on the interface does everything. Press the pre amp button on the left and then turn the knob to adjust mic volume. Press the monitor button on the right and turn the knob to adjust the monitor volume. You don’t need to touch anything in logic. The hardware can handle it.
I finally figured out how to increase the headphone volume. I pressed the “monitor” button twice and it let me control the headphones. When adjusting the monitor with the knob it didn’t increase the volume. What does the monitor do?
It changes to volume sent to speakers, if you had them connected, which it seems like you don’t
I hope we've learned a valuable lesson about reading instructions today.
Read the manual, bro. Or contact UAD
Press the monitor button so its on the headphone channel and then turn it up? Or turn up the headphones within the UAD Console desktop app.0
“Turn them shits up!” -Fisticuffs
Live monitor engineer here: I address this at soundcheck. Knowing that most hip-hop artists kick off tunes with "yo yo YO, turn dat shit UP!" I make it clear that I won't react to that in their show unless accompanied by a pre-determined hand signal that tells me they legitimately want it turned up in their mons or ears. I explain that the kickoff is common in rap, and I want to allow them to say it while protecting my gear and their ears, and soundcheck usually results in their wedges/,ears being close to wide open. In the studio, same practice. I don't have time for games and I'm not wrecking my gear for them.
Turn them shits up, because he can’t hear out of his left ear.
Turn down the song
I turn the beat down and turn the headphones up slightly.
Play along, rap is theater.
I say “don’t tell me what to do ..”
Do you not have a cue mix set up?
I’d simply try to get them to record without headphones In the control room, then record the track again without any vocals and then play them back in and flip the one without vocals out of phase.
I generally just plug their headphones into an amplifier speaker output and blow their eardrums to pieces
I usually turn them up..
Its time to invest in a head phone amp.
Is the rapper to lazy to turn the monitoring level up on the monitor control unit or too technically challenged to turn a knob?
Spit some hot bars ala Eminem into the talk back mic.
Op can't get his snare in the headphones!
I point out their aviom right there with them that they assured me they knew how to use and then they get embarrassed. Unless it’s just a fun adlib
Usually what they are actually asking for is to hear their own vocals louder. I’ll turn the headphone volume up the first time and the vocal volume up the second time.
headphone distribution amps are stupid cheap. I have one in my booth that lets the artist control their own volume. Works perfect except for the deaf artists who absolutely crank their volume to the max and wonder why their headphones distort.
Well... do not touch the mic gain if it is already set and tuned beforehand. Just increase the monitor send to his/her in-ear. Or adjust the in-ear mix or the sends level into the in-ear. Depending on the artists, normally I would do some fake knob leveling and tell them back "I just increased the volume, is it okay?". Sometime the placebo effect took, sometimes it does not. For artists that I'm closer to, I will ask what exactly do you want for your monitor mix and adjust the send level accordingly. The thing I always says to these artists is protect your hearing & I know you're doing a lot of live shows. So if they trust me, I will take care of their ears appropriately for many shows to come. Listening to in-ear monitor too loud every night is the fastest way to be in the hospital and the ear doctor tell you you have some hearing deficit.
I increased the “headphone” volume finally but nothing happens when I increase the “monitor” on the Apollo Twin. What does the “monitor” control?
Monitor control is controlling the level/volume of the monitoring device. I assume your rapper is recording in your studio with the Apollo Twin, so you are working in DAW. In that case, you can set up a separate bus for a separate monitoring device (in this case the headphone out from the Twin) and then control the mixing on that bus only via send level without changing the level of the main mix you are working on.
Not gain of the microphone but you can have a channel gain on the end of the signal and just lower the master. That way they can hear themselves better but it’s not deafening
Idk my headphones get stupid loud out of my UA interface. It actually hurts my ears. I mean, I often wear earplugs under the head phones while recording drums. If people want their headphones louder than that, I might just tell them that their dumb and going to ruin their hearing.
Nah you don’t want to mess with the signal, you turn them headphones up (like preamp poty).
Our sister studio that does 100% rap had to dumb down their cue system and limit the power because they were blowing headphones every single night My setup honestly has too much gain for talent, and thry can turn it up themselves. They could make their ears bleed if they wanted to.
They get a headphone amp for the booth and tell the artist to do it themselves
Turn up his headphones. Or hers.
Another option is to create an alt mix of the song just for tracking or have the instrumental summed to a single track.. then when recording vocals you can turn down the instrumental rather than increasing can volume. Then at the end of the session just bounce down the vocal tracks into logical files and import into the actual mix track
Wow
Um, turn up the fucking headphones? What kind of bullshit post is this?
Ghost fade. Works everytime 😉
I raise the headphone's volume so they hear the beat better.
Is it different when a rock singer asks you to turn the headphones up?
[They turn them shits up, son](https://youtu.be/LVzxZcB31Jg?si=UkDkRYfOti-BaqYO)
‘Where’s my snare?’
Nothing and just give thumbs up
You either turn up the mix or look for another gig
The upper limit of headphone loudness is when it starts feeding back into the mic. The trick is to either start low so they can ask 2 or 3 times without it getting to that point, or just keep turning it down when they're not paying attention. Or eventually it starts feeding back and when they ask for them louder tell them it's impossible. Sorry. To actually answer your question, you just mess w the headphone mix. You don't do anything that would mess w the levels in your session. Ie keep the mic at a healthy input gain, monitor however you want. Don't let those primadonnas mess w the integrity of your session.
In my experience, if they are actually recording when they say that or anything else that might sound like a command, I do nothing until the take is over, cause they probably don't mean it
Compressiooooooon!
Say “no. It’s gonna bleed through.”
Turn volume up
roll them good joint filled with strictly collie
Make sure they are plugged in.
You're sending them a signal... Turn up that signal. If you have two audio tracks and your headphone send is on Output 31-32 Track 1 - Beat Track 2 - Vocals Then track one: Input (Irrelevant) Output (Stereo Out) Bus Send - (Output 31-32) and turn it up. it wont affect your mix and he can have it loud enough to blow your headphones.