Live Sound Production

Introduction

A live show happens once. There is no second take, the audience is in the room, and everything you did earlier in the day decides whether the next two hours are music or firefighting.

This book is about that day. The system from the stage to the last row, the patch, the line check, the soundcheck against a clock, the two mixes running at once, the ring-out, the hour when the room fills with bodies and changes under you, and the ears you have to keep for the rest of your career.

What this book covers

• The whole live system as one signal chain, and the PA that ends it.
• Power, grounding and the electrical faults that make a stage buzz.
• The paperwork a band sends ahead, and the input list the day runs on.
• Stage setup, microphone and DI placement, and a line check that finds faults early.
• The console, its layers and scenes, and the show file you cannot afford to lose.

• Soundcheck, building a front-of-house mix, and shaping it with EQ, dynamics and effects.
• Monitor mixes on wedges and in-ears, feedback, and ringing a stage out.
• Wireless microphones and in-ear transmitters, and how they fail.
• Mixing a show live, festivals and changeovers, speech work and broadcast feeds.
• Show levels, the audience's hearing, and protecting your own.

Who this is for

Technicians who can patch a stage and want to mix one, people moving from installed AV into live work, and anybody who has been handed a console and four hours. It assumes Audio Basics for microphones, faders and frequency, and Physics of Sound for why rooms behave as they do.

How to Use This Book

Read it once through, then take one chapter at a time to a real show. The order follows a show day: the system, the paperwork, the stage, the check, the mixes, the show, the load-out.

Keep a show notebook

Write down the input list that worked, the frequencies you cut on that vocal, the wedge mix the singer asked for, how long your patch actually took and what broke. Within a season you will have a personal reference worth more than any book, including this one.

A note on the words

Live audio vocabulary is inconsistent and regional. A snake, a multicore and a loom are the same thing; monitors, wedges and foldback are the same thing; a line check and a ring-out are different things that newcomers often confuse. This book uses the words most widely understood and names the alternatives where they matter.

A note on safety

Live sound puts you near flown loudspeakers, mains power, heavy cases, crowds and sound levels that permanently damage hearing. Nothing here qualifies you to rig a PA, to do electrical work, or to sign off a structure. It teaches you to recognise the hazards, work within your training, protect your hearing from the first day, and stop work that is unsafe.

Where this book sits

This book assumes Audio Basics for what a microphone, a fader and a frequency are, and Physics of Sound for why rooms behave as they do. It does not assume you have ever mixed a show.

What pairs with this

• Acoustics Fundamentals — why the room does what it does to your mix
• Wireless & RF Systems — the radio half of every modern stage

Where it leads

These are not steps in an order. Take whichever one fits.

• Monitor Engineering — Touring — the monitor side of this work, at touring scale
• A2 & Stage Audio Fundamentals — the stage technician's craft this book leans on all day
• Front-of-House Mixing — the front-of-house craft in depth

The Live Sound System

Before you touch a fader, you have to be able to see the whole path: the microphone on a snare drum, the cable, the stage box, the console, the processing, the amplifier and the box hanging over the audience. Every fault you will ever chase is somewhere on that line.

Before you mix, you must see the whole signal path from the stage to the last row.

From stage to PA

A live sound system is one big signal chain, exactly the source-processing-destination model applied at scale. Sources on stage — microphones and DIs (direct boxes that take an instrument's signal directly) — feed into a stage box or snake, a multi-channel connection that carries all those signals to the console. The console (front-of-house, and often a separate monitor console) processes and mixes them. The mixes go to amplifiers and processing, then out to the PA: the mains facing the audience, subwoofers for low end, and fills for areas the mains miss.

Seeing this whole path is the foundation of live sound. Every problem — a dead channel, feedback, a weak vocal — is somewhere on this chain, and you find it by tracing, just as in AV Fundamentals. A live engineer who holds the whole system in their head can diagnose calmly while the one who does not panics.

Say the chain out loud until it is automatic: source, cable, stage box, console, processing, amplifier, loudspeaker, room, ear. Faults are found by bisecting that chain — prove signal at the middle, and you have halved the problem in one move.

It is one chain, but it forks. The same input feeds the front-of-house mix, the monitor mixes, and often a recording or broadcast split, and a fault can exist on one fork and not the others. Knowing where your signal splits is most of live troubleshooting.

FOH, monitors, and the room

Live sound serves two different audiences at once. The front-of-house (FOH) mix is what the paying audience hears through the mains. The monitor mixes are what the performers hear of themselves on stage, through wedges or in-ears — different from the FOH mix and different for each performer. On larger shows a monitor engineer runs these from a separate console; on smaller shows one engineer does both. Holding these two worlds in mind is central to live mixing.

The third factor is the room itself. A space colours sound — reflections, resonances, dead spots — so a mix that sounds right at the console must translate to the whole audience. Part of live sound is setting up and tuning the PA so it covers the room evenly and the mix sounds good everywhere, not just where the engineer stands.

The two mixes have opposite goals. Front of house wants the music to sound like a record to two thousand people. Monitors want each performer to hear the few things they need, as loudly as possible, without the stage turning into a feedback loop.

The room is the third party, and it votes. It absorbs, reflects, resonates and changes completely when an audience walks into it. A mix that only works in the empty room at four o'clock is not finished.

Who does what on an audio crew

On a full show there is a system technician who puts the PA up, tunes it and keeps it alive, a front-of-house engineer who mixes for the audience, a monitor engineer who mixes for the stage, and stage technicians — sometimes called patch or A2 — who look after microphones, backline lines, wireless and everything that plugs in.

On a small show one person is all four. The roles still exist; they just happen in one head, which is why the order of work matters so much more when you are alone.

The shape of a show day

Trucks and PA in, system up and tuned, stage set and patched, line check, soundcheck, doors, support, changeover, headline, load-out. Every stage of that day depends on the one before it, and time lost early is never recovered later.

The single most useful habit in live sound is to know what time it is and what has to be finished by when. Engineers are not judged on their mix alone; they are judged on whether doors opened on time.

The live chain, and what fails at each link

Learn the chain in this order and troubleshooting becomes a routine.

On the job

A vocal microphone is dead at line check. The engineer listens at the console: nothing. They plug the same cable into a known-good channel: still nothing. They swap the cable at the stage box: signal appears. Ninety seconds, three moves, no guessing — and the band never knew.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Take the nearest live system, however small.

The PA Itself

The PA is the part of the system the audience actually experiences, and most of what a mix can ever be is decided before anybody puts a fader up. A great mix through a badly aimed system is a bad night.

Mains, subs, fills and delays

The mains cover the bulk of the audience. Subwoofers carry the low end and are usually arranged separately, on the ground or flown, because low frequencies behave differently. Front fills cover the first few rows the mains fly over, side fills or out-fills reach the edges, and delay loudspeakers cover audience too far away for the mains, usually past about thirty metres, time-delayed so their sound arrives with the main system rather than ahead of it.

Every one of those boxes exists because a part of the audience would otherwise be badly served. When somebody asks why there are so many loudspeakers, the answer is always coverage, not volume.

Coverage, and the shape of the room

Coverage is how evenly the system reaches every listening position. A system is aimed so that the far seats get enough level and the near seats are not punished, which usually means pointing boxes further back than instinct suggests.

Judge coverage rather than assume it. Walk the room while music is playing — back, sides, front row, balcony, under the balcony — and listen for where the sound falls apart. That walk is a professional habit and it takes four minutes.

Where the mix position goes

The mix position should be in the audience area, roughly on the centre line, at a distance where the system has blended, and never under a balcony, against a back wall or in a corner. Promoters will always want it somewhere else, because it occupies seats.

If you cannot get a good position, know what your position is lying to you about — usually too much low end against a wall, or too little in a corner — and check your mix by walking.

Amplifiers, processing and protection

Between console and boxes sit the system processing and the amplifiers: crossover filters that send each band to the right driver, equalisation for the system and the room, delay for alignment, and limiting that protects the loudspeakers from the engineer.

Modern rigs hold this as a preset matched to the specific loudspeaker model and configuration. Recalling the wrong preset is a genuine way to destroy a PA, and checking which preset is loaded is part of a system technician's first hour.

Tuning and alignment

A system is aligned before it is mixed through, and the work is called time alignment: subs timed to the mains, delays timed to the mains, levels matched between hangs, and broad equalisation applied to fit the room. This is done with measurement, not opinion, because ears adapt within seconds and measurement does not.

A technician who is not yet doing this work should still understand it, because it explains why the same console and the same band sound different in two rooms, and it is where the craft of large-format live sound lives.

Flown and stacked systems

A PA is either flown from rigging points or stacked on the ground, and both are engineering. Flown systems involve weights, angles, motors, secondary safeties and a person qualified to sign them off. Stacked systems involve stability, floor loading and keeping people from pulling them over.

This book does not qualify you to rig. It qualifies you to recognise when something overhead is not right, to stay out from under a moving load, and to ask who signed it off.

What each part of the PA is for

Coverage decides the box count, not loudness.

How to do it

1. Find out which preset is loaded and whether it matches the boxes.
2. Confirm every hang and every sub is actually making sound.
3. Play known music you have heard on many systems.
4. Walk the room: back, sides, front row, edges, under any balcony.
5. Listen for coverage holes, timing problems and one side louder than the other.
6. Check the mix position against what you heard on the walk.
7. Raise anything wrong with the system technician before soundcheck, not during it.

What goes wrong

Practice it

At the next show you attend, before doors.

Power, Grounding and Noise

The most common audible fault on a stage is not musical. It is a hum, a buzz or a crackle, and it comes from electricity rather than from anything anybody played. An engineer who understands this fixes in two minutes what others chase all afternoon.

Where audio power comes from

On a small show the audio system plugs into the building. On a larger one it takes a feed from a distribution board, ideally on the same supply as everything else audio, and ideally not shared with dimmers, motors, LED walls or catering.

Sharing a circuit with lighting dimmers and kitchen equipment is how a rig acquires a buzz that no equaliser will remove. Where the power comes from is a question to ask during the advance, not at soundcheck.

Hum, buzz and the loops that cause them

A low hum usually means a ground loop: two pieces of equipment connected by audio and also by mains earth, at slightly different potentials, so current flows through the signal screen. A buzzier, harsher noise usually means dimmers, LED drivers, or a poor connection.

The cure is to break the loop safely — a transformer-isolated DI, a ground-lift switch on a DI, or getting both devices onto the same supply. The cure is never to defeat a mains earth. Lifting a safety earth to solve a hum is illegal, dangerous and has killed people.

Balanced lines and why they work

Balanced connections carry the signal twice, out of phase, and the receiver subtracts one from the other. Noise picked up along the way lands equally on both and cancels, which is why long runs on a stage are balanced and why an unbalanced instrument cable is turned into a balanced line by a DI as close to the instrument as possible.

This is the practical reason to know the difference: unbalanced runs are short, balanced runs can be long, and a DI is what converts one to the other while also isolating the two ends.

Cable routes and the audience's feet

Audio runs are kept away from mains cable where possible, crossed at right angles where they must meet, and routed where people do not walk. Where cable crosses a walkway it goes under a ramp or is taped down properly, because a trip in the dark is the most likely injury of the night.

Tidy routes are also fast routes. A stage you can trace at a glance is a stage you can fix during a song.

Electrical noises and what they usually mean

Diagnose by the character of the noise before touching a fader.

On the job

A guitar rig hums whenever the house lights dim. The engineer hears the change, recognises a shared supply with the dimmers rather than a bad cable, moves the guitar amplifier's feed to the audio distribution, and the hum vanishes. The alternative was an hour of swapping leads.

What goes wrong

Practice it

On the next stage you set up.

The Paperwork and the Patch

A band's paperwork arrives days before the band does, and it decides your morning. Where everybody stands is on the stage plot; what plugs in, and in what order, is on the input list; what was promised is in the rider. Read all three early and the day is calm.

The stage plot

A stage plot is a plan view of the stage showing each performer, their instruments, their amplifiers, the drum kit, the wedges and the power they need. It tells you where microphone stands go, how long lines have to be, and where the monitor sends have to reach.

Read it for problems before the truck arrives: a keyboard player who needs power in the middle of the stage, a drummer upstage of the power drop, a wedge count you do not have.

The input list

The input list — sometimes the channel list — numbers every source in order, starting at the drum kit and ending at the spares. It names the microphone or DI each one wants, and often whether it needs phantom power or a stand. On corporate work the same information lives inside the run of show, alongside everything else that happens that day.

This is the document the entire day runs on. It becomes your patch, your console naming, your line check order and your monitor sends. Print it, keep it at the console, and mark it up as reality differs from it.

Patching, and keeping it in order

Patch in the order of the input list, not in the order things arrive on stage. Channel one is kick because it is on every list you will ever see, and when the numbers match the list, a fault can be described over talkback in three words.

Name the channels on the desk as you patch. On a digital console the channel name is what you will read under pressure in a dark room, and "CH17" tells you nothing at half past nine.

What to check in a rider before the day

• Number of channels needed against what the stage box and console provide.
• Number of monitor mixes needed against the wedges, amplifiers and console buses available.
• Wireless channel count, and whether the frequencies are legal and coordinated here.
• Whether in-ears are being used, and who supplies them.
• Power positions on stage, and who provides distribution.
• Anything the rider promises that the venue does not actually have.

When the paperwork is wrong

It often is. Bands change members, add a keyboard, drop a guitar, or send last year's list. Assume the list is roughly right and confirm the differences with the band's own engineer or the tour manager at load-in, rather than discovering them at soundcheck.

Mark up the changes on your printed copy as they appear, and re-issue the corrected list to whoever needs it — monitors, broadcast, the house engineer tomorrow. A marked-up list is the show's as-built.

A typical input list, and what each line asks for

Numbers vary; the order is remarkably consistent worldwide.

How to do it

1. Read the stage plot and input list days before, not on the day.
2. Compare the channel count, wedge count and wireless count with what you have.
3. Raise anything that does not fit with the tour or production manager early.
4. Print the input list and keep it at the console.
5. Patch in list order, labelling each stage box socket as you go.
6. Name every channel on the desk as it is patched.
7. Mark the printed list where reality differs.
8. Re-issue the corrected list to monitors, broadcast and the venue.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Find any band's stage plot and input list online or in your files.

Stage Setup & Line Check

A show is won or lost at setup. By the time a fader moves, the microphones are placed, the DIs are in, the lines are run, and every input has been proved on its own channel at a healthy level. None of that is glamorous and all of it decides the night.

A show is won or lost at setup. Get the inputs right before you touch a fader.

Setting up the stage

Setup is placing and connecting every source on stage. Each instrument and voice gets the right mic or DI, placed well (using the mic knowledge from Audio Basics — the right type, the right pattern, aimed to reject monitors), and connected through the stage box to a known console channel. A clear input list — which source is on which channel — is the map the whole show runs on. Disciplined, labeled setup is what makes the rest of the day calm.

Cable and stage management matter here too. Cables run safely and tidily, mics and stands placed so performers can work, monitors positioned for each performer. A well-organized stage is safer, faster to troubleshoot, and more professional. The habits from AV Fundamentals — label, route cleanly, test — apply directly.

Work outside in: risers and drums first because they take longest, then amplifiers and keys, then vocals and wedges, then the lines. Place stands so performers can play, and so a microphone can be reached without climbing over a drum kit in the dark.

Aim every open microphone away from every loudspeaker it can hear. That one habit — using the microphone's own directionality against the wedges — buys more gain before feedback than any equaliser ever will.

Line check

Before soundcheck, you line check: confirming that every input is actually arriving at the console on the right channel and is clean. You go input by input — tap each mic, have each DI played — and verify signal on the expected channel, with no noise or wrong patching. Line check catches the setup mistakes (a swapped cable, a dead mic, a mispatched channel) while there is time to fix them, before the band is standing there waiting.

This is gain structure in action: as you confirm each input, you set its gain to a healthy level (above the noise floor, below clipping, with headroom), so the channel is ready to mix. A thorough line check means soundcheck can focus on the mix rather than chasing basic problems. Skipping it means discovering a dead vocal mic mid-soundcheck, or worse, mid-show.

Line check is a proof, not a listen. Go input by input in list order: tap or speak into it, see it on the right channel, hear it clean, set a healthy gain, move on. Anything wrong is fixed before the next input is touched.

Do it before the band appears, with the stage to yourself if possible. Every minute of line check saves five minutes of soundcheck, and soundcheck is the expensive time because the band is standing in it.

Microphone and DI choices that make mixing easy

The mix starts at the microphone. A source captured well needs little; a source captured badly cannot be rescued by processing. Choose for the instrument, place for the sound you want, and use the pattern to reject what you do not want.

A DI takes an instrument-level, unbalanced output and delivers a balanced microphone-level signal, with isolation. Use one for every keyboard, playback device and acoustic pickup, and put it near the instrument rather than near the stage box.

Setting gain properly

Gain is set at the loudest the source will actually be, not at the level of a polite tap during line check. Aim for a healthy signal with real headroom above it: comfortably above the noise floor, comfortably below clipping, with room for the singer who doubles in volume at showtime.

Every level problem later in the chain begins here. Too little gain and you fight noise all night; too much and the channel distorts on the first chorus, which sounds like a broken PA and is not.

Phantom power, polarity and the small traps

• Phantom power on for condensers and active DIs, off for ribbons and anything unknown.
• Mute before plugging or unplugging anything, every time, without exception.
• Check polarity on multi-mic sources such as snare top and bottom.
• Check that a wireless channel is on, in range and not on a dead battery.
• Label at the stage box as you patch, not afterwards.

Keeping the stage safe and workable

Cable runs go along the back and sides, not across performance space. Anything crossing a walkway is ramped or taped. Wedges are placed so performers do not step on them in the dark and so they point at ears rather than at microphones.

A tidy stage is also a fast stage. When something fails mid-show, you will have seconds, in the dark, with an audience watching, and the only thing that helps is that you can see what is what.

The line check, input by input

Prove each one before moving on. Never batch the faults for later.

How to do it

1. Get the stage to yourself and have the printed input list in hand.
2. Mute the monitors and bring the PA down; you are proving, not listening loudly.
3. Work in input-list order, one channel at a time.
4. Tap, confirm channel, listen for noise, set gain with headroom, name it.
5. Fix any fault before moving to the next input.
6. Mark anything changed on the printed list.
7. At the end, unmute and confirm nothing is left muted or soloed.
8. Tell the stage and the tour manager that the stage is checked and ready.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Set up and line check a small stage: two vocals, a guitar, a keyboard and a kick drum.

The Console and the Show File

The console is where your decisions live, and on a digital desk most of them are invisible until you go looking. Layers hide channels, scenes change things behind your back, and a show file is a day's work in a file that can be lost in a second.

What a console actually does

Every console, analogue or digital, does the same four things: it takes inputs at the right level, processes them, routes them to buses, and sends those buses out. A front-of-house mix is a bus. Every monitor mix is a bus. A recording feed is a bus.

Learn a new desk by finding those four things rather than by learning its menus. Where is gain, where is the channel processing, where do buses get fed, and where do outputs get patched.

Analogue and digital, and what changes

An analogue desk shows you everything at once: every knob is its own setting, and what you see is what is happening. A digital desk shows you one slice at a time, which is why a channel can be muted, filtered or routed somewhere you did not expect while the surface looks normal.

The digital compensation is recall: the whole show state can be saved, recalled and carried to another venue. That is an enormous gain and the reason nearly all touring is digital, but it moves the risk from knobs to files.

Layers, banks and getting lost

A digital surface maps a few physical faders onto many channels through layers or banks. The commonest live mistake in the world is riding a fader on the wrong layer, and the second commonest is soloing a channel and leaving it soloed.

Build a custom layer with the channels you actually need during the show — vocals, solo instruments, playback, talkback — so the moves that matter are all on one bank in front of you.

Scenes, snapshots and what they overwrite

Scenes recall a stored state — levels, mutes, processing, routing — and are the backbone of theatre, corporate and heavily cued shows. They are also a trap: recalling a scene can overwrite a change you just made, and scope settings decide what a scene is allowed to touch.

Know what your scenes are scoped to before you rely on them, and know how to stop a scene changing your gains if the band is still soundchecking.

Show files and backups

At the end of soundcheck you have hours of work stored in a file: gains, EQ, dynamics, monitor sends, scenes, names. Save it, name it with the date and the act, and copy it off the console onto a memory stick — and on tour, onto something that does not travel in the same case as the console.

Save again after any significant change, and at the end of the night. Consoles fail, memory sticks fail, and people press the wrong button. Three copies is the working minimum, and it costs thirty seconds.

Audio over a network

The snake is now often a network: stage boxes and consoles exchanging many channels of audio over a standard cable. It brings channel counts, splits without hardware and simple redundancy — and it brings network failure modes, clocking and configuration.

Two practical rules carry most of it. One device is the clock master and everything else follows it. And a redundant link is only redundant if it takes a physically different path, which means two cables that do not run through the same crushed doorway.

Things to find on any console before you mix on it

Twenty minutes with an unfamiliar desk, in this order.

On the job

A front-of-house engineer rides a vocal up through a chorus and nothing happens. The fader under their hand belongs to a different layer; the vocal is two banks away. Three seconds of confusion in front of two thousand people, entirely prevented by building one custom layer at soundcheck.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Take any digital console you can get your hands on.

Soundcheck & Building a Mix

Soundcheck is the only rehearsal, it happens against a clock, and the people in it are tired and want to be somewhere else. Run it well and the show is musical decisions. Run it badly and the show is repair work.

Soundcheck is where the show's sound is built. Run it efficiently and you set up everything that follows.

Running a soundcheck

Soundcheck is checking and balancing each source with the performers playing, and building the starting mixes. A typical approach works through the inputs — often starting with drums and bass, then other instruments, then vocals — getting each to sound good and sit at the right level before combining them. With limited time and tired performers, an efficient, organized soundcheck (knowing your input list, working in a sensible order, communicating clearly with the stage) is a real skill.

During soundcheck you also build the performers' monitor mixes — giving each what they need to hear themselves. This often happens alongside the FOH mix, and on bigger shows the monitor engineer drives it. Good communication with performers (what do you need more of?) and calm efficiency make soundcheck productive rather than stressful.

Work in a fixed order so the band knows what is happening: drums one piece at a time, bass, guitars, keys, then vocals, then the whole band playing a song. Ask for what you need in a short, clear sentence and let people stop when you have it.

Watch the clock out loud. If soundcheck is forty minutes and the drum kit has eaten twenty-five, say so and move. Nobody thanks an engineer for a perfect kick drum and no vocal check.

Building the FOH mix

Building the front-of-house mix means combining all the sources into a balanced whole that serves the music and the room. You set relative levels (the vocal sits above the band, the kick and bass anchor the low end), shape tone with EQ (the frequency theory from Audio Basics made practical), and use the room's character to your advantage. The goal is a clear, balanced mix where the important elements are heard and nothing is harsh or buried.

A starting mix from soundcheck is just that — a start. The mix changes during the show as the room fills with people (which absorbs sound), as songs vary, and as energy builds. Soundcheck gives you a solid foundation; the live mixing in Running the Show & Protecting Hearing is where you keep it right as the show unfolds.

Build from the bottom: kick and bass together as the floor, the rest of the kit around them, then the harmonic instruments, then the vocal on top and clearly audible. If the vocal is not intelligible, nothing else you do matters to the audience.

Mix at something near show level for part of the check. Tonal balance changes with level, and a mix built quietly falls apart when it is pushed.

Three checks, and the difference between them

Keep the three separate in your head. A line check proves the inputs arrive. A soundcheck balances them with people playing. A virtual soundcheck replays a multitrack recording of last night's show through the desk so the engineer can work without the band on stage.

Where a virtual check is available it is a gift: the system can be tuned and the mix refined during the afternoon with nobody standing in the spotlight waiting.

When there is no soundcheck at all

Festivals, support slots and corporate work often give you a line check and nothing else. The answer is preparation: know the input list, start from a sensible default mix, get the vocal right first, and make the rest work during the first song.

Every experienced engineer carries a starting point — approximate gains, a rough balance, high-pass filters in sensible places — so that the first thirty seconds of a show with no check is a mix rather than a search.

High-pass filters and cleaning up first

Before shaping anything, take away what should not be there. A high-pass filter on every channel that has no low end to contribute — vocals, guitars, overheads — removes stage rumble, handling noise and the low-end build-up of twenty open microphones.

This one habit clears more mud out of a live mix than any amount of corrective equalisation afterwards, and it costs one control per channel.

Communicating with the stage

Use the performer's name, ask for one thing at a time, and say when you have what you need. "Thank you" after every source is not manners alone; it tells the player they can stop.

Never talk about a performer over an open microphone or a talkback you have not checked. Rooms hear more than you think, and the reputation you build in soundcheck is why you are or are not hired again.

A soundcheck order that works

Same order every time, so the band knows what is coming.

How to do it

1. Before the band arrives, have every input line checked and gained.
2. Start with drums, one piece at a time, and keep it to fifteen minutes.
3. Do bass with the kick, not alone.
4. Take guitars and keys quickly; they change at showtime anyway.
5. Give vocals proper time, including monitors, and check intelligibility.
6. Run one full song at something like show level.
7. Walk the room during that song.
8. Save the show file before anybody leaves the stage.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan a soundcheck for a four-piece band with a forty-minute window.

Shaping the Mix

Balance first, then tone, then dynamics, then effects — in that order, always. Most bad live mixes are an engineer reaching for an equaliser to solve a problem that was a fader, a microphone position or a stage volume.

Subtractive EQ, and why it is mostly cuts

Live equalisation is mostly taking things away. Cut what is offensive rather than boosting what is missing, because boosting adds level, level adds feedback risk, and every boost eats the headroom you will need in the last chorus.

Work in a rhythm: find the frequency by sweeping a narrow boost until the problem gets worse, then cut there. Use narrow cuts for problems and wide, gentle moves for tone.

Where the common problems live

Boxiness and mud sit in the low mids, harshness and the ear's most sensitive band sit in the upper mids, sibilance sits higher still, and the rumble of a stage lives below anything anybody plays. Feedback frequencies on a wedge tend to gather in the mid range where microphones and monitors are both most efficient.

Learn these regions by ear on a system you trust, not from a chart. The chart tells you where to look; only listening tells you what is wrong.

Compression, in a live room

Compression evens out what changes: a singer who whispers and then shouts, a bass player whose notes vary, a snare hit harder in the chorus. Set a threshold where the loud parts start to be controlled, a gentle ratio, and an attack and release that let the source keep its character.

Live compression is lighter than studio compression, because a live mix is already fighting a room and a stage. A vocal that pumps audibly is worse than a vocal that occasionally jumps.

Gates, and when not to use them

A gate closes a channel when there is nothing on it, which tidies a drum kit and removes amplifier hiss. It is also a reliable way to lose the quietest, most musical moments of a night if it is set too aggressively.

On a live stage, prefer good microphone placement and a sensible high-pass filter to a rack of gates. Gate the toms if you must, and leave the vocal alone.

Effects, and how much is too much

Reverb places a voice in a space, delay adds size and rhythm, and both are easy to overdo in a room that already has reverberation of its own. Big rooms need less; dry rooms take more.

Set effects on the buses rather than on the channel, so that one control changes the whole picture, and check them with the room full. What sounded tasteful in an empty hall sounds like a cathedral with two thousand coats in it.

Mixing for the music, not for the meters

The mix serves the song. A ballad wants the vocal forward and the band behind it; a heavy number wants the kit and the bass driving. That means the mix changes between songs, which is why live mixing is performed.

Know the set if you can. Ask for a set list, mark the songs with solos, features and quiet moments, and put it where you can read it in the dark.

What to reach for, in order

If an earlier step fixes it, the later steps are not needed.

On the job

A guitar sounds harsh and the engineer reaches for the equaliser. Two minutes of cutting later it is dull and still harsh. The actual cause was a microphone pointed straight at the centre of the cone; moving it two inches off-axis fixed it, and the EQ came back to flat.

What goes wrong

Practice it

With any multitrack or live rig you can practise on.

Monitors & Feedback

Performers who cannot hear themselves play badly, sing flat and lose confidence, and the audience hears all of it. Giving them what they need without turning the stage into a feedback loop is one of the two or three real crafts in live sound.

Performers who can hear themselves perform better. Giving them that without feedback is core live-sound craft.

Building monitor mixes

Monitor mixes are what performers hear of themselves on stage, and they are as important to a good show as the FOH mix — a band that cannot hear itself plays badly. Each performer needs a different mix: the singer wants mostly their own voice, the drummer wants click and bass. You build these on aux sends (from Audio Basics), giving each performer what they ask for. In-ear monitors give precise, isolated mixes; floor wedges are simpler but louder on stage and more prone to feedback.

Communication is half the job. Performers signal what they need — more vocal, less guitar — often during the show with hand signals, and the engineer responds quickly and calmly. A monitor engineer who keeps performers happy keeps the whole show strong, because comfortable performers deliver better and create fewer problems.

Each mix is built on an aux send: a separate mix of the same channels, with its own balance, fed to one wedge or one in-ear pack. Start with what the performer needs most — their own voice or instrument — and add only what they ask for.

Less in a wedge is almost always better. Every extra source is more level on stage, more spill into microphones and less gain before feedback for everybody. The engineer's job is to give people what they need, not everything they could have.

Ringing out feedback

Feedback — the runaway squeal from a mic hearing a speaker, which you met in Audio Basics — is the constant enemy of stage monitors, because monitors point sound right at open microphones. Ringing out is the technique for pushing monitors as loud as possible before they feed back: you carefully raise the level until it just begins to ring, identify the specific frequency that is ringing, cut that frequency on the EQ, and repeat — gaining a little more level each time before stopping safely short of the squeal.

Prevention matters as much as cure: directional mics aimed away from monitors, sensible monitor levels, and good placement all raise the feedback threshold before you even ring out. The live engineer manages feedback continuously through the show, because a stage that squeals in front of an audience is the most public failure in live sound. Calm, quick feedback control is a hallmark of a pro.

Ring out before the band arrives: open the microphone into its wedge, raise the wedge level slowly until the system just begins to ring, identify the ringing frequency, cut it narrowly, and repeat. Two or three cuts buys real level on a wedge, which needs fewer cuts than a whole system; ten cuts means something else is wrong.

Stop short of the edge and leave headroom. A stage rung to the absolute limit at four o'clock will feed back at nine, because a body in front of a microphone and a warm room change the numbers.

In-ear monitors, and what changes

In-ears isolate the performer from the stage, which is why they sound so clean and why they feel so strange. A mix that works on a wedge is wrong in an ear: the performer no longer hears the room, so the mix has to supply the band, the ambience and often a click or a guide track.

In-ears remove most feedback risk and drop stage volume dramatically, which improves the front-of-house mix as much as it improves the performer's night. They also fail differently: a dead battery is silence, and silence in an ear is frightening on stage.

Stage volume, the real enemy

In many rooms the loudest thing is not the PA but the stage: a guitar amplifier pointed at the audience, a drummer hitting hard, six wedges running flat out. Everything that leaves the stage arrives at the audience uncontrolled and unmixed, and it sets the floor below which your mix cannot go.

Getting stage volume down is worth more than any processing. Angle amplifiers, use shields, move wedges closer to ears, and make the case politely: a quieter stage means everybody hears themselves better, not worse.

Managing monitors during the show

Performers ask during songs, with hand signals: pointing at themselves and up means more me, a flat hand pushed down means less. Answer quickly, make a visible change, and acknowledge them so they know you have seen it.

Small, decisive moves beat large ones. If a singer asks for more of themselves, a small rise plus a small cut of something else usually solves it, where a big rise alone starts the feedback you spent the afternoon preventing.

Preventing feedback before you ring out

• Point every microphone's least sensitive direction at the nearest loudspeaker.
• Keep microphones close to their sources, so less gain is needed.
• Keep wedges close to the performer's ears, so less level is needed.
• Get the stage volume down so nothing has to fight.
• High-pass everything that does not need low end.
• Mute what is not being used, including spare vocal microphones.

Wedges and in-ears, compared

Neither is better; they fail and succeed differently.

How to do it

1. Get the stage quiet and everybody clear of the microphone.
2. Open the vocal channel into its own wedge only.
3. Raise the wedge level slowly until you hear the first ring.
4. Identify the ringing frequency by ear or with an analyser.
5. Cut it narrowly, a few decibels at a time.
6. Raise the level again until the next ring appears.
7. Stop after two or three cuts and leave headroom.
8. Repeat for each position that needs it, then check with somebody standing at the microphone.

What goes wrong

Practice it

With one microphone, one wedge and a quiet stage.

Wireless on Stage

Every modern stage carries wireless: handheld microphones, belt packs, guitar links, in-ear transmitters and the intercom. It is the part of the system that fails most publicly and the part most often set up by somebody who has never been told how it works.

What can go wrong with a radio link

A wireless microphone is a small radio transmitter and a receiver with an antenna. It fails when two systems land on the same frequency, when their frequencies combine to create interference, when the signal is blocked by bodies and metal, when the antenna is badly placed, or when a battery dies.

All five are preventable, and all five are common. Wireless is not unreliable; badly planned wireless is unreliable.

Frequency coordination

Coordination means choosing a set of frequencies that do not clash with each other, with broadcast transmissions in that area, or with anybody else's wireless in the building. Systems are scanned in the room, on the day, because the spectrum is different in every city and changes with what else is switched on.

Manufacturers provide coordination software and pre-coordinated groups, and on shows with many channels somebody owns this job. Spectrum is also regulated: what is legal to transmit on differs by country, and using the wrong band can be an offence as well as a bad idea.

Antennas and where signal goes

Receiver antennas should see the stage: up, clear of metal, away from other antennas, and not behind the rack door. On larger systems antennas are mounted remotely with a distribution amplifier feeding several receivers, which keeps one good antenna position serving everything.

Bodies absorb these frequencies. A performer walking behind a truss, a crowd between transmitter and receiver, or a transmitter in a back pocket against the skin all reduce range in ways that look like equipment faults.

Batteries and channel discipline

Fresh batteries every show, without exception, and a system for knowing which packs have been changed. Rechargeables are fine if they are managed; what is not fine is the pack nobody is sure about, going on stage.

Label each transmitter with the channel it belongs to, keep them in one place, and hand them out rather than letting them scatter. Most wireless chaos is logistics, not radio.

Checking wireless before doors

Walk every wireless microphone around the whole performance area while watching the receiver's signal and audio meters. Do it with the stage as it will be — set dressed, screens live, lighting on — because those are what will interfere.

Check in-ear packs at the positions performers will actually stand, and listen in each one. A receiver that reads healthy at the rack tells you nothing about the far corner of a stage.

Wireless faults and their real causes

Nearly always one of these five.

On the job

A handheld microphone drops out only downstage left. The engineer looks up: the receiver antennas are behind a metal rack door on the opposite side of the stage. Moving them onto a stand at head height, in line of sight, fixes a problem that three battery changes did not.

What goes wrong

Practice it

With any wireless system you can borrow.

Running the Show & Protecting Hearing

Doors open and the job changes. Until now you were building; from here you are performing, in public, without a pause button, while the room changes under you and somebody's equipment eventually fails.

The show is live and unrepeatable. Mix it well, respond to what happens, and protect the ears that do the job.

Mixing the live show

When the show starts, the engineer mixes it live — actively keeping the balance right as the music and the room change. The room fills with people and absorbs sound, songs shift in dynamics, performers move, energy rises. The engineer rides the faders, makes EQ moves, brings up a solo, controls a too-loud moment, and handles surprises (a failing mic, a sudden feedback) calmly. A live mix is performed, not set and left, which is what makes a great live engineer feel like part of the band.

The whole day's discipline pays off here. A clean system, a good line check, a solid soundcheck, and well-rung monitors mean the show mix is about musical decisions rather than firefighting. And when something does go wrong, the engineer who knows the signal chain traces and fixes it without the audience noticing. The show is the reward for the preparation.

A live mix is ridden. Vocals come up for verses and down for choruses, solos are lifted and put back, a quiet song gets a different balance from the one before it, and the whole mix opens up as the room warms.

Keep your hands on the faders that matter and your eyes on the stage rather than the desk. The band tells you what is coming before the music does: a guitarist stepping forward is a solo about to happen.

Protecting your hearing

Hearing is the live engineer's most important and most irreplaceable tool, and loud sound damages it permanently — there is no recovery. Protecting it is not optional, it is career preservation. That means mixing at sensible levels (loud does not mean good; a clear mix at a reasonable level beats a punishing one), using quality earplugs that lower volume without ruining the sound when appropriate, and giving your ears rest. An engineer who wrecks their hearing has ended their own career.

Sensible levels also protect the audience, who did not choose to risk their hearing. A professional mixes loud enough to be powerful and clear, not so loud it harms people. Caring for hearing — yours and the audience's — is part of being a responsible live sound professional, because everything else depends on it.

Hearing damage is permanent, cumulative and painless while it happens. It is a dose — level multiplied by time — so a long day at a moderate level costs as much as a short exposure to something brutal.

Wear flat-response moulded plugs when you are not mixing: during load-in, at soundcheck of somebody else's band, during the support act, at load-out. Give your ears quiet time between shows. Have your hearing tested and keep the results, because you cannot notice slow loss yourself.

This is not caution; it is the difference between a career of thirty years and a career of ten. Every engineer who lasted protected their ears from the beginning.

Practical sign-off

Live sound is learned on real systems. The learner sets up a stage, line checks inputs with healthy gain, runs a soundcheck and builds a mix, builds a monitor mix and rings out a wedge, and mixes a small live show. A mentor signs off when the learner can set up and mix a small show safely.

• Set up a stage and line checked inputs with healthy gain
• Ran a soundcheck and built a balanced FOH mix
• Built a monitor mix and rang out a wedge safely
• Mixed a small live show at safe levels

What changes when the audience walks in

Two thousand people absorb a great deal of high frequency and some low, damp the room's reverberation, and raise the noise floor. A mix that was bright and clear at soundcheck becomes duller and quieter in exactly the way you would expect.

Expect it, and do not over-correct in the first song. Give the room a couple of numbers to settle, then adjust once, deliberately.

Faults during a show

Something will fail in front of an audience. The method is the same as ever, done faster and more quietly: identify which input, decide whether the show can continue without it, deploy the spare, and fix the real cause when there is a gap.

Have spares within reach before doors: a spare vocal microphone patched and gained, a spare cable, a spare DI, spare batteries. A fault you can cover in ten seconds is invisible; the same fault without a spare is the thing everybody remembers.

Support acts and changeovers

Most shows have more than one act, and the time between them is short and public. Save the support's settings as their own scene or file so it can be recalled next time, and get the headliner's state back cleanly.

Be generous to support acts. They have less time, less system and usually no engineer of their own, and the industry is small enough that today's support engineer books your next job.

Show level and the audience's hearing

Loud is not the same as good. A clear mix at a sensible level is more impressive than a punishing one, and the audience did not consent to hearing damage when they bought a ticket. Many venues and many countries impose legal limits measured at the mix position, with the reading logged.

Know what limit you are working to and how it is measured before the show, not after somebody complains. Mixing within a limit is a skill: control the low end, keep the mix clean, and let clarity rather than level do the work.

What to have within reach before doors

A fault covered in seconds is a fault the audience never noticed.

How to do it

1. Confirm it at the desk: meter, gain, mute, layer.
2. Decide in two seconds whether to fix or replace.
3. Signal the stage technician, or walk it up yourself between songs.
4. Swap to the spare microphone already patched and gained.
5. Bring the spare up and take the dead channel out.
6. Diagnose the real cause when there is a gap, not during the song.
7. Note it on the input list so the next show starts from the truth.

What goes wrong

Practice it

At the next show you work or attend.

Talking to the Stage

Live sound is a service job done mostly without words. The people you serve are on a stage under lights, cannot hear you, are nervous, and are about to do the most exposed thing they do all year.

Talkback, and using it well

Talkback is a microphone at the console routed to the stage wedges or in-ears. Check it before soundcheck, keep it short, and remember it is a public address: everybody on stage hears what you say, and so do the people loading in behind you.

Use names. "Sarah, one more on the snare please" is quicker and warmer than "can I get the snare again", and it tells everybody else they can stand still.

Hand signals

During a show, everything happens by gesture. A performer pointing at themselves and raising a hand wants more of themselves; a flat palm pushed down wants less; a circling finger means keep going; a hand across the throat means stop. Learn the local dialect of these on your first day with any crew.

Always acknowledge. A nod or a raised hand tells the performer you have seen them and are acting, which stops them signalling harder and getting distracted from playing.

Working with a visiting engineer

When a band brings their own engineer, the house or festival engineer's job is to make them effective quickly: hand over a working system, explain its quirks honestly, say what the limits are, and then get out of the way while staying available.

When you are the visiting engineer, respect the house: their system, their rules, their relationship with the venue. Ask, do not assume, and leave everything as you found it.

The stage manager and the running order

On anything larger than a club, the stage manager runs the stage and the clock. They call the changeover, tell you when the act is ready, and are the person to tell if you need two more minutes.

Keep them informed rather than surprised. "I need five minutes on the vocal channel" at the right moment is a schedule; the same information at doors is a problem.

Conduct that gets you rebooked

Turn up early, know the paperwork, be calm when things fail, never talk about the band where they can hear you, and never let the audience see you panic. Technical skill gets you the first booking; conduct gets you the next twenty.

The live industry is a small world with a long memory. The engineer people recommend is almost never the one with the best ears; it is the one who made the day easy.

Signals you will see from a stage

Regional variations exist. Acknowledge every one.

On the job

A singer signals for more vocal three times in one song and the engineer, head down, never looks up. By the last chorus the singer has stopped signalling and stopped trying. Nothing technical went wrong; the show got worse anyway.

What goes wrong

Practice it

At the next show you work.

Festivals, Changeovers and Shared Systems

Most paid live sound is not a headline show with a full day. It is twenty minutes on somebody else's system, with a band you have never met, a patch you did not make, and an audience already in front of you.

The festival day

A festival stage has a house system, a house crew, and a rolling schedule. Each act gets a changeover window, a line check if they are lucky, and their set. Nothing is rebuilt between acts; everything is prepared in advance.

The engineer's job shifts from building to switching: recall or build a mix fast, keep the stage moving, and hand over cleanly to the next person. Speed and courtesy are the skills; perfection is not on offer.

Preparing for a changeover

Everything that can be done before your window has to be done before it: risers prepared and pre-patched with looms, in-ear packs handed out, spare microphones ready, a rough mix loaded from a file or a written starting point.

Line check what you can in the seconds available, in priority order: vocals, then the rhythm section, then everything else. A vocal that works is a show; a perfect hi-hat is not.

Working on somebody else's system

You inherit their PA, their tuning, their console and their conventions. Ask before changing system settings, never re-tune a rig you do not own, and put back anything you had to move.

Learn the desk during the act before yours rather than during your own. Watching the house engineer for ten minutes is worth more than a manual.

Festival etiquette

The stage crew are running many acts on a schedule and are the reason the day works at all. Be ready early, be quick, be pleasant, and do not argue about the schedule with the person holding it.

Get your gear off the stage as fast as you brought it on. The act after you is waiting, and the way you leave a stage is what the crew will remember when your act comes back next year.

Outdoors, weather and wind

Outdoor shows add hazards that stop shows: wind on a roof or a PA hang, rain on equipment, heat, and the noise limits neighbours enforce. Wind speed is monitored, and stopping a show is a decision made by people whose job that is.

Cover what you can, keep drinks away from desks, and know where the stop-work decision comes from. Sound behaves differently outdoors too: little reflection, wind carrying the mix away, and levels that fall off faster than anybody expects.

A twenty-minute changeover, in order

Order matters more than speed; speed comes from order.

How to do it

1. Save and export your show file before you leave the desk.
2. Return any system settings you changed.
3. Tell them anything that is broken or unusual, honestly.
4. Leave the input list marked up with what actually happened.
5. Get your gear off the stage without being asked twice.
6. Thank the stage crew by name.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan a twenty-minute changeover for a five-piece band.

Speech, Corporate and Broadcast Feeds

A great deal of the live audio work that pays is not a band. It is a conference, a keynote, an awards night, a house of worship or a theatre — and in all of them the measure is not excitement but whether every word is understood.

Speech is a different job

With speech, intelligibility is the whole product. That means clear microphone technique, gain structure with headroom for the nervous speaker who shouts, careful control of the frequencies that carry consonants, and a system that covers the room evenly without echoes.

It also means a much lower tolerance for failure. A dropout during a song is a shame; a dropout during a chief executive's keynote is the thing everybody in the room remembers about your company.

Lecterns, lapels and headsets

A lectern microphone stays where it is put and rejects the room. A lapel microphone frees the speaker and picks up far less signal, so it needs more gain and gives less before feedback. A headset microphone stays near the mouth and is the most reliable of the three by a wide margin.

Where the choice is yours, push for headsets on anybody moving around. Where it is not, place lapels high on the chest, on the side the speaker turns towards, and check them with the speaker actually talking.

Presenters, rehearsals and the run of show

Corporate events run to a run of show: a timed document of who is on, what plays, what is said and what happens when. Audio is one line in it, and the audio person is expected to hit their cues without being reminded.

Rehearse with the actual presenters where possible, check every microphone they will use, and have a spare ready for each. Presenters are not performers; they will hold a handheld wrong and stand off a lapel, and part of the job is quietly making that work.

Feeds for recording, broadcast and streaming

Somebody is nearly always taking a copy: a recording, a stream, a broadcast truck, an overflow room, an assistive listening system. Each wants a clean, balanced feed at a known level, usually a mix of its own rather than your front-of-house mix, because a room mix sounds wrong on headphones.

Agree the feed before the day: what it is, what level, what connector, who provides the cable, and who checks it. Then check it yourself, because a feed nobody listened to is a feed that is silent.

Theatre, worship and the in-between

Theatre adds cues, radio microphone plots, scene changes and a director. Worship adds volunteers, weekly repetition and a congregation that must hear speech and music equally well. Both reward the same disciplines as any other live work, with more paperwork and more people.

In all of these, the engineer who documents the patch, saves the show file and leaves the system working for the next person is the one who keeps being asked back.

Feeds you may be asked for

Agree each one before the day, and test it yourself.

On the job

A keynote is streamed to three thousand people and the stream carries no audio for the first eight minutes, because the feed was patched but never listened to. The room was perfect. The only audience that mattered heard nothing.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan the audio for a conference session: one lectern, two lapels, a panel and a stream.

Load-out and the Live Sound Career

The show ends and the work does not. How a system is packed decides how fast it goes up tomorrow, and how you behave in the last hour of a long day decides whether you are asked back.

Load-out without damage

Power down in order — amplifiers first, then processing, then the console — so nothing thumps through the boxes. Coil cable properly, over and under, and put each cable back in the case it came from. Microphones go back in their own boxes, not loose in a drawer.

Label anything broken as you pack it. A microphone that goes back in the case unmarked is a fault that reappears tomorrow, on stage, in front of an audience.

What the next show inherits

Every pack is a message to the next person, who may be you. Cables coiled and tied, cases labelled and closed, spares replenished, batteries restocked, the show file saved and copied, and the input list filed with its marks.

Ten minutes at the end of a long night is the cheapest time you will ever spend, because it is deducted directly from tomorrow's set-up.

How people get started

Almost nobody starts by mixing. They start by pushing cases, running cable, changing batteries, patching stages and looking after microphones — the A2 and stage technician work — and they mix when somebody trusts them with a support act.

That path is not a delay; it is the training. Engineers who came up through stage work know where every fault lives, and they are calm when things break because they have fixed them from both ends.

Where a live career goes

From stage technician the routes fan out: monitor engineer, front-of-house engineer, system technician, playback and timecode, production management, or the venue side as a house engineer or technical manager. Touring, festivals, corporate, theatre and worship each have their own rhythm and their own pay.

Most working engineers move between several of these. A corporate week pays for a festival weekend, and the skills transfer in both directions.

What gets you rebooked

• Turning up early and knowing the paperwork.
• A stage that is patched, labelled and traceable.
• Calm when something fails, and a spare within reach.
• Respect for the house crew, the support act and the stage manager.
• Hearing that still works in twenty years, because you protected it from the first day.

Where live sound work comes from

Most careers are built from several of these at once.

How to do it

1. Save and export the show file before touching anything else.
2. Power down amplifiers, then processing, then the console.
3. Coil cable over and under; return each to its own case.
4. Pack microphones in their own boxes; label anything faulty.
5. Restock batteries, tape and consumables for tomorrow.
6. File the marked-up input list.
7. Check the stage and the mix position for anything left behind.
8. Thank the house crew before you leave.

What goes wrong

Practice it

At the end of your next show.

Glossary

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal