Behringer Wing: Keep the Click Track Out of Your Mains
Your band needs the click track in their in-ears, so it has to run through your console. That means you now have a channel on your board you never want to hear in the mains, because if it ever gets turned up there, everybody in the room hears a metronome. On the Behringer Wing it takes one tab to make sure that can’t happen: turn the click track off in its main sends, and it still goes to the band and never to the room.
What you need
- A Behringer Wing. I’m on the full size console.
- A click track coming into a channel on the board. Mine comes from playback; I explain what the click and guide are in my Playback click, guide and tracks video, and how I get Playback into the Wing in Multitracks.com Playback on the Wing with Dante.
- In-ear mixes for your band, running on buses.
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My whole console setup is in my Wing front-of-house kit, and the in-ear side is in my in-ear monitoring kit.
What a click track is, and why it hits your console
The click track is a metronome. Most bands these days are using one, and they have it in their ears. It keeps them on time, on the tempo of the song, at all times.
The musicians need it in their ears, so you’re going to need to feed that click track through your soundboard. They mix it into their in-ear mix, not their wedge mix. If you’re using a floor wedge you wouldn’t want the click in it, because you’d hear it in the room.
So you have a channel for the click track. On my Wing it’s channel 37, and the musicians mix that channel into their in-ear mix, which I run as a bus. If you’re building those mixes, custom in-ear mixes with the Wing’s processing chain covers what you can do on the way to their ears.
The problem: a channel you never want in the mains
Now you have a channel on your soundboard that you don’t ever want to hear in the mains. If it got turned on in the mains it would be really bad: an awful metronome click track sound, and everybody would hear it and not enjoy it.
You could just keep that fader down and hope nobody bumps it. Here’s a better way: disable it in the mains, and let it still go to the in-ears.
Step 1: See how your mains are set up
First figure out which main is actually your mains. On my Wing, main 1 is my mains.
- Select a vocal channel.
- Go to the main sends tab. It’s the second to last tab on the touchscreen.
- You’ll see that vocal channel is on and up in main 1. That’s what a normal channel should look like.
The Wing has four mains, and they actually act like a bus, so you can use them for more than left and right. I use main 1 for my left-right mix, main 2 for my subwoofers, and another main for my live stream. I walk through that in creative routing with the Wing’s four mains, and how mains fit next to buses and matrices in buses vs mains vs matrices on the Wing.
Step 2: Turn the click track off in every main
- Select your click track channel.
- Go to the main sends tab, the second to last one.
- Look at every main you use. In my case that’s mains, subs and a live stream mix.
- Make sure the click is off in all of them.
On mine it’s already off. Yours might not be. By default every channel would be on in main 1, or whoever set up the board may have turned every channel on in main 1, because for almost every other channel that’s what you want.
The gotcha: it still goes to the band
This is the part people worry about, and it’s why this works. Turning the click off in the main sends doesn’t touch anything else. No matter what you do, the click still passes through to the band: to the sends on fader and to the buses. It just doesn’t go to your mains.
So even if the click fader gets turned up by accident, it will never pass through to the mains. The only way it gets there is if somebody goes back to that main sends screen and hits the on button under the mains.
Why it matters, especially for your live stream
Turn it off in every main you use, not only the left-right mix. Your live stream would be the worst place for it: the people at home would hear it, and you likely wouldn’t even know, because you’re probably not listening to the live stream mix in the booth.
Once it’s off in every main, you’re covered even if a child comes into your booth while you’re on that layer and hits that fader. You won’t get anything in your mains you don’t want.
FAQ
Why not just keep the click fader down?
Because a fader can get bumped. With the click off in its main sends, the fader can be all the way up and it still never reaches the mains. The band keeps hearing it in their in-ears either way.
Will turning it off in the mains take the click out of the band’s in-ears?
No. It still passes through to the buses and the sends on fader, which is where the in-ear mixes live. Only the main sends are off.
Where are the main sends on the Behringer Wing?
Select the channel and go to the second to last tab on the touchscreen. Each main has its own on button and level there, per channel.
Should the click be off in the live stream main too?
Yes. Turn it off in every main you use: mains, subs and live stream. The live stream is the one you’re least likely to notice, because you’re probably not listening to it in the booth.
Related tutorials
- The Wing’s four mains: how I split mains, subs and live stream.
- Buses vs mains vs matrices: where each one sits in the Wing’s processing order.
- Custom in-ear mixes: processing your band’s in-ear sends.
- Playback’s click, guide and tracks: what the click track actually is and where it comes from.
- My real-world Wing layout: how I lay out the board at church.
Gear I use for this
- Behringer Wing (full size): the console in this video.
Everything else I recommend is on my product recommendations page.
Got a question I didn’t cover? Ask me in the chat here on the site, or leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help.
