Focusrite Clarett 4Pre - Providing Foldback While Recording

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3. Providing foldback while recording
While recording, musicians will often prefer to hear themselves along with the other players, and
when overdubbing, the tracks that have already been recorded. A mix created for this purpose, which
the musician can hear on headphones while performing, is called foldback.
Focusrite Control lets you dene several different mixes, each of which may be either mono or stereo,
and which may be routed to any of the Clarett 4Pre’s outputs. This enables individual musicians to
have a foldback mix optimised to their own needs. In this way, each foldback feed can be made up
from a different mix of a musician’s own input, the live contributions from the other performers, and
DAW tracks which have already been recorded. See the Focusrite Control Guide for details of how to
congure different mixes, and how to route them to the Claret’s 4Pre’s various outputs.
Each of the two headphone outputs on the front panel initially provide a default mix: Headphone
1’s mix is always the same stereo mix routed to Line Outputs 3 and 4, while Headphone 2 has a
completely independent mix dedicated for headphone monitoring use. You can adjust the content
of both mixes in Focusrite Control - that for Outputs 3/4 denes what is heard by Headphones 1,
and that for Outputs 5/6 (which have no corresponding rear panel sockets) denes what is heard by
Headphones 2 .
Either or both of these may be used for foldback mixes; each output can drive a pair of headphones
directly. This is the easiest method, and has the advantage the mixes are stereo. If you need to drive
additional pairs of headphones, you’ll need to include an external headphone amplier as part of
your set-up:
Headphone Distribution Amplifier
Always remember - when you source a monitor mix from input signals, ensure the DAW channels on
which you are recording are muted, otherwise the musicians will hear themselves “twice”, with one
signal audibly delayed as an echo.