Sending a click to your in-ears through a small mixer

A click track belongs in your in-ear monitors, and it has to stop there. The band and front of house get the backing track. A small mixer beside the kit is how you keep those two apart when you want a level for each, or when a single Y-cable is not the rig you are carrying. This is that job on a six-channel desk such as an Allen & Heath ZED-6: the iPad on a flight case next to the mixer, a short lead between them, and the click leaving through the in-ears.

Interfaces with more outputs, and what to do when a lead gets pulled mid-song, are inrunning backing tracks and a click from an iPad at gigs. With no mixer at all, start with the Y-cable guide.

The click and the track have to arrive separately

The mixer can send the click to you only if the click and the track turn up on different inputs. That is a stereo file with the click on one side and the mix on the other, or a player that puts them on two outputs. Making that file is its own job: click hard to one side, everything else summed to the other, nothing on the click that softens the transient.

From there, one mixer channel is the click and another is the track. The click channel must not reach the cable you hand to front of house. Prove it before doors. Ask the engineer to solo that feed while the click is playing. If they can hear a click, the split is wrong.

From the iPad to two line inputs

Recent iPads have USB-C and no headphone socket. Apple's USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter works, and so do most adapters the iPad sees as a headphone output. From that socket use a stereo breakout, the same sort of Y-cable as a direct-to-desk rig: tip is the left channel, ring is the right. Plug the left jack into the click channel's line input and the right jack into the track channel. Label both ends the day the cable arrives. Do not use Bluetooth for the audio. The delay and the dropouts make it useless for a click. Bluetooth is fine for a page-turner pedal.

A class-compliant USB audio interface is the better lead if you have one. Its outputs are balanced, so a longer run picks up less hum, and you get more level than the headphone socket. Click on output 1 into the first line input, track on output 2 into the second. An iPad has one USB-C port. An interface in that port will not charge the iPad unless a powered hub sits in between, or the interface itself passes power. Find that out at home. The headphone adapter does not pass power, so with that cable the iPad is on its battery for the whole set.

Use the line jacks on the mixer, not the mic XLRs, and leave the instrument switch off. That switch is a high-impedance input for a guitar. An iPad into it will be thin and noisy. Leave the EQ at the centre mark so the desk is not reshaping the click or the track.

A ZED-6, which has no aux

The ZED-6 has two mono channels, two stereo channels, main left and right on XLR, and a headphone socket. It has no aux send, so you cannot build a separate in-ear mix and a front-of-house mix at the same time. The split is the pan.

Use the two mono channels. Each has its own gain and its own mix knob, so the click can be louder in your ears than the track is at the desk. Pan the click hard left. Pan the track hard right. Anything short of hard over leaves some of the click on the right bus, and the right bus is the one front of house will hear. Turn the pans until they stop.

Send only the right main output to the desk. The main outs are line-level XLR, impedance balanced, so a long run picks up less hum than a jack lead. If the engineer wants a mic-level input, put a DI box at your end. One cable, the track side. Plugging both main outs in as a stereo pair hands them the click on the left.

With no PFL button pressed, the headphone socket follows the main stereo mix, and the phones knob is its volume. In-ears on a stereo plug hear the click in the left ear and the track in the right. That phones level does not change the feed to front of house. Use a stereo plug. A mono jack in that socket shorts one side of the headphone amp, and it will not sum the click into both ears.

PFL is how you check a channel before it joins the mix. It replaces the main mix in the headphones and on the meters, and it is taken before the mix knob. Set the gain with PFL, peaks around 0, then switch every PFL off before you play. Leave one down and your ears are no longer on the split.

The phones socket will not put the click in both ears with the track underneath. If you want the click in both ears and none of the track, take the left main output into a headphone amp, or the line input of a wired in-ear pack, and leave the phones socket empty. You will hear click only. A blend needs a desk with an aux.

A stereo channel will also take the pair: click in its left jack, track in its right, balance left at the centre mark so each side stays on its own bus. You then have one gain for both. The mono channels are the ones to use when the click and the track need different levels.

A desk that has an aux

Bring the click and the track up on separate channels. Take the click channel out of the main mix, and send it pre-fader on an aux to your ears, so the channel can stay down and the click still reaches you. Send the track to the main output and on to front of house. Add a little of the track to the same aux if you want it under the click, and any vocal or bass you are not already getting from the monitor desk.

The usual mistake is leaving the click assigned to the main mix. The audience hears it as soon as that mix is turned up. After you think it is out, solo the track feed with the click playing.

How loud each side should be

Set the iPad's volume and then leave it. Riding it during the set moves the front-of-house level every time you fix your ears. Full volume is the right place if the line input can take it. On the ZED-6 line jack the gain goes low enough for a headphone output; set that gain with PFL so the peaks sit around 0, not hard against the top of the meter. If the channel clips with the gain all the way down, lower the iPad until it stops, and leave it at that mark for the night.

The track's mix knob is what the engineer hears. Give them a steady level and tell them their fader is the volume in the room. The click's mix knob, and then the phones knob or the headphone amp, is what you hear. Set the click with the in-ears in and the band at gig volume. A quiet room will have you turn it down, and the cymbals will bury it once the set starts.

What usually goes wrong

The click in front of house

Pan short of hard over, both main outputs plugged into the PA, or a click channel still routed to the main mix. It is often quiet enough to miss from the stool and still obvious through the PA. Solo the track feed. Then pull the click channel's mix knob to zero while a song plays. The PA should not change. If it does, the click was in it.

Ground hum

The lead from the iPad's headphone socket is unbalanced, so keep it short. The mixer's XLR is the cable that should cross the stage. Hum that starts when you plug the charger in is usually a ground loop between that power supply and the mixer. Put them on the same mains socket. If the buzz is only there while charging, run the set on the battery, or fit a DI with a ground lift on the feed to the desk. Do not lift the mains earth. Listen in the in-ears first. Hum you can already hear there is in the iPad lead, and a lift on the front-of-house cable will not take it out.

The battery

Charge the iPad the night before, and charge the in-ear pack if it has its own battery. With the headphone adapter in, you cannot charge during the set. Turn Low Power Mode off. If you are on an interface, power the iPad through a powered hub when the interface uses the only port, and check it is actually charging with the audio still coming out of both channels.

An unlocked iPad

A stick will find the screen. Turn on Guided Access so a tap cannot leave the app, and turn on a Focus so a call or an alert cannot cut the audio. Do that once the mixer is set, so you are not coming out of Guided Access to chase a knob. In Click Left the stage player starts LOCKED, so a stick cannot retune the click. Play locks it again. Unlock is a two-position slider, so a stick cannot flip it. With the pad lock on, Next and Previous cannot end a playing song, from the screen or a page-turner pedal.

A short checklist

• iPad charged. Low Power Mode off. In-ear pack charged if it needs it.
• Click lead and track lead into their own line inputs, labelled, instrument switch off.
• Click pan hard left, track pan hard right. Every PFL switch off.
• Only the track output plugged into the PA. Engineer confirms there is no click in that feed.
• iPad volume set and left alone. Click level set with the band playing, not in a quiet room.
• Hum check with the charger plugged in, then with it out.
• Focus on, Guided Access on, stage locked, then leave the screen alone.

Where Click Left fits

Click Left plays the file and sends the click to one output and the track to another. On a headphone socket or a two-output interface, route click to output 1 and track to output 2. That is left and right on the Y-cable, which is what the two mixer channels above are waiting for. It works out which side of the file is the click. If a song came out the other way round, open it and change its layout. Which output the click and the track go to is one setting for every song, in Settings, so you are not re-routing between numbers.

On a larger class-compliant interface the click can go to any output and the track to any one or two. If those outputs disappear mid-song, click and track fall back to outputs 1 and 2 instead of going silent, and the stage tells you the audio output was disconnected. The fallback outputs are the iPad's own, so what you hear depends on what is plugged into that socket. Know that before the gig. The gig guide covers it.

Every track is measured as it comes in and matched to the same loudness, and the click is brought to the same peak, so the desk gets the same level every song. There is a click trim on the transport rail, in 1 dB steps, for the night. Each song's own level is separate from that trim. If you play in more than one band, each band has its own click level. How loud the click sits in your ears, next to the track and the kit, is still set on the mixer. Click Left has a click level and a track level per song, matched as the file comes in.

Run Soundcheck with the mixer connected and the real lead in. It checks that every file decodes, that the routing matches the outputs it can see, the battery, the storage and Low Power Mode, and it warns you if the click is about to come out of the iPad's own speaker. It reminds you about Focus. A Metronome song, and Metronome opened with no set, send the click through that same output at the same level as the file clicks, so a number with no backing track does not need a different route on the desk. Playing to a click on stage covers count-ins and what to do when one song fails. A whole set of clicks, with nothing going to front of house, is in click-only gigs.