Cue, solo and the monitor
Solo on this desk feeds a cue bus, and the cue bus feeds a monitor output you choose. It never feeds the mains. That is a deliberate design rule, and it is what makes solo safe to press during a show.
Where the controls are
The cue and monitor block in the header: cue mode, SIP arming, solo clear, monitor source, level and dim.
An always-visible cue and monitor block in the header, beside the emergency controls. It is console-wide state, so it is reachable from any bank without changing what the fader bay is showing.
The three cue modes
| Mode | What you hear | When |
|---|---|---|
| PFL | Pre-fader listen: the channel before its fader. | Checking a source, setting gain, finding a fault. The fader position does not matter. |
| AFL | After-fader listen: the channel as it sits in the mix. | Judging what the audience gets from that channel. |
| SIP | Solo in place: everything not soloed is muted in the mains. | Almost never during a show. |
PFL and AFL are one tap.
SIP is guarded. It is disabled until you arm it in Setup, and even then the button requires a deliberate confirm step. The reason is obvious once stated: SIP mutes the programme the audience is listening to. The guard is there so nobody reaches it by accident on a dark stage.
Solo clear
A momentary clear drops every active solo at once. Use it rather than hunting for which strips are still lit.
The monitor output
The monitor picker lists the live sinks the cue bus can feed — headphones, a wedge, a second interface output — and routes the cue bus to the one you choose.
It is the same routing action the patchbay's cue row performs, so the two views always agree: change it in either place and the other follows.
Alongside it:
- Monitor level — the standard encoder, with the same hold-to-reveal behaviour as every other encoder on the surface.
- DIM — a fixed attenuation for talking to someone without letting go of the level.
- Takeover (A/B) — switches which source the monitor position is following, so a monitor engineer can flip between two references without repatching.
Solo does not affect the mains
Worth repeating because it is the opposite of some desks' defaults: pressing solo on this console changes what is in your headphones and nothing else. The mains keep running.
The one exception is SIP, which is why it is guarded.
If the monitor is silent
- Is a monitor output picked at all? The picker shows the current sink.
- Is the monitor level up, and is DIM off?
- Is anything soloed? PFL and AFL only produce sound when something is cued.
- Does the chosen sink actually work — can you hear the main mix through it? If not, the problem is the device, not the cue path; see the main output is silent.