When you’re packing up gear for your gig and making sure you have spare batteries, cables, and other essentials, a backup Wi-Fi router may not be on your list of essentials. But with the multitude of digital mixing consoles with Wi-Fi capability being used today, a reliable Wi-Fi router may be just as crucial to your performance as cables and batteries. The benefits of mixing via Wi-Fi are clear: musicians can control their own monitor mixes with their own smartphones or tablets right from the stage, and engineers can tweak the mix from anywhere in the venue.
Even if your mixer has built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, your results may vary because every venue is different: things like wireless video cameras, microwave ovens, fluorescent lights, and other RF emissions can interfere with your Wi-Fi signal. If your mixer’s built-in Wi-Fi doesn’t seem to be performing well due to interference issues, your backup router may help you avoid that interference. If the interfering RF emissions are localized near your mix position, simply placing the router a dozen feet away could be enough to solve the problem. Just connect the router to your digital mixer with an Ethernet cable, and everyone can connect wirelessly through the router.
If your mixer doesn’t have built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and you already rely on a router for Wi-Fi, then you’ll definitely want to have a backup router as well. Hey, things happen, and having your router fail at a show isn’t quite the same as having a wireless microphone fail, for example. In the case of a wireless mic, you can simply revert to a wired mic (as long as you brought one as backup!). But if you rely on Wi-Fi for monitor mixing or front of house mixing and your router isn’t working properly, the most practical solution by far is to switch over to a backup router.
Considering the many benefits of mixing with Wi-Fi, a backup router is a minor investment that could pay off big time if you run into issues at a gig. The important thing to remember is that when you’re mixing wirelessly, your Wi-Fi router is just as critical as every cable in your rig. And even if your digital mixer has built-in Wi-Fi, consider a backup router as having the same importance as a wired backup microphone for a wireless mic. Keep a backup router in your gear bag, and you’ll have solved many problematic scenarios before they occur.
