How to Build a Monitor Mix on the XR18: Proven Setup

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Learning how to build a monitor mix on the XR18 is one of the first things most bands want to do after buying the mixer — and one of the things that trips people up most consistently. The XR18’s app-based interface is powerful, but if you’ve come from an analog board where aux sends were physical knobs, the workflow feels unfamiliar until it clicks. I’ve been building monitor mixes for my five-piece band through the XR18 for years. This guide walks through the complete process from first aux send to per-member mix — the way I actually do it, not the way the manual describes it.

Why Monitor Mixes Matter More Than You Think

Before getting into the XR18’s specific workflow, it’s worth understanding why monitor mixing is one of the highest-leverage things you can do to improve your band’s live performance. A band that can’t hear itself clearly makes worse decisions on stage — vocalists push too hard to hear themselves, guitarists turn up to compensate for a thin monitor mix, drummers overplay, and the whole performance suffers in ways that have nothing to do with talent or preparation.

When every performer hears exactly what they need to hear — their own instrument at the right level, the key reference points they rely on, enough of the other band members to stay locked in together — the performance changes. You stop fighting your monitoring situation and start playing music. For a self-producing band running its own sound, learning how to build a monitor mix on the XR18 well is one of the most direct investments you can make in how the show goes.

How to Build a Monitor Mix on the XR18: Understanding Aux Sends

The XR18 has six aux sends. Each aux send is an independent output — a separate mix that you build from your input channels and send to a specific destination, like a monitor wedge or an IEM transmitter. The main mix is what goes to the PA and the audience. The aux sends are what goes to the performers on stage.

Think of each aux send as a completely separate mix desk that shares the same inputs as your main mix but has its own independent level controls for each channel. Aux 1 might be the drummer’s mix — heavy kick, snare, and his own overhead close to the top, light on everything else. Aux 2 might be the lead vocalist’s mix — her own voice loud and clear, prominent guitar for pitch reference, minimal drums. Aux 3 might be the bassist’s mix — kick and bass locked together, some guitar, just enough vocal to know where he is in the song. Each is built independently without affecting what the others hear or what goes to the main mix.

With six aux sends, the XR18 can support six individual monitor mixes — enough for every member of a five-piece band to have their own mix, with one send to spare for a stage or broadcast feed.

How to Build a Monitor Mix on the XR18: Setting Up Your First Aux Send

Open the X Air app and connect to your XR18. The workflow for setting up an aux send is the same whether you’re using X Air Edit on a laptop or the X Air app on a tablet — the layout differs slightly between platforms but the concepts are identical.

Step 1 — Name your aux sends before you start. In the X Air app, navigate to the routing or bus section and label each aux send with the performer it belongs to. Aux 1: Drums. Aux 2: Lead Vocals. Aux 3: Bass. And so on. This seems like a small step but it prevents the most common monitor mix mistake: adjusting the wrong person’s mix during a show because you can’t remember which aux is which under pressure.

Step 2 — Set your aux send levels from the main mix view. Select the aux send you’re building (Aux 1 — Drums in our example) and you’ll see the main channel faders now control that performer’s aux levels rather than the main mix. Bring up the channels that drummer needs: kick, snare, overhead, and maybe a reference of the lead vocal. Everything else stays down or at a very low level.

Step 3 — Set the aux send output level. The aux send master level controls how much total signal goes to that performer’s IEM transmitter or monitor wedge. Start around -10dB and adjust based on what the performer tells you they’re hearing during soundcheck. Don’t max it — you want headroom for the performer to adjust their own level up if needed.

Step 4 — Connect your output. The XR18’s six aux sends appear on the rear panel as XLR outputs labeled AUX 1-6. Run an XLR cable from the appropriate aux output to your IEM transmitter or floor wedge for that performer. With six outputs, you can have six discrete destinations wired simultaneously.

Step 5 — Verify the signal. Have the performer put their IEMs in and play or sing while you walk the aux send levels up from silence. Confirm they’re hearing the right mix — that the channels you thought you brought up are actually audible — before moving to the next performer’s mix.

Assigning Channels to Aux Sends: The Practical Approach

One of the recurring confusions for bands new to the XR18 is understanding the relationship between the main mix channel assignments and the aux send assignments. Here’s the important thing to understand: every input channel can send signal to every aux send independently, at whatever level you choose. The main mix fader and the aux send level for any given channel are completely separate — turning a channel down in the main mix doesn’t change what that channel sends to the aux sends, and vice versa.

This means you can have the kick drum low in the main mix (because the PA has enough low end from the subwoofer) while having it prominently loud in the drummer’s IEM mix. You can have a click track or a metronome on an input channel that sends nothing to the main mix but sends prominently to the drummer’s aux send. You can have the lead vocalist’s channel prominent in the guitarist’s monitor without affecting any other performer’s mix.

The practical workflow: set your main mix first, then go aux send by aux send and build each performer’s mix independently. The main mix decisions and the monitor mix decisions are completely separate exercises — what sounds right for the audience doesn’t dictate what any performer needs to hear on stage.

Building Per-Member Mixes: What Each Performer Actually Needs

The content of each performer’s monitor mix is the heart of how to build a monitor mix on the XR18 — and it should be driven by one question: what does this person need to hear to play their part well? Not what sounds good, not what’s balanced, but what information does this performer need to stay in time, in tune, and locked into the band? Here’s how I approach each position in a five-piece band.

Drummer: Kick drum loud — the drummer needs to feel the kick’s relationship to their own playing. Snare loud. Their own overheads for cymbal reference. Bass guitar at a moderate level for groove locking. Lead vocal at a moderate level to know where they are in the song. Everything else minimal or absent. Drummers are surrounded by their own acoustic sound and typically need less of everything except the kick and bass locking together.

Bassist: Kick drum prominent — the kick-bass relationship is the rhythmic foundation of every song. Their own bass guitar instrument at a usable level. Lead vocal for song position. Rhythm guitar if the song relies on a tight guitar-bass-kick locked groove. Minimal drums beyond the kick. The bassist’s mix is usually the simplest to build because their monitoring needs are the most focused.

Guitarist(s): Their own guitar instrument clearly audible — guitarists need to hear themselves to control dynamics and technique. Lead vocal for pitch reference and song position. Kick and snare at a moderate level for time. Minimal keys or other guitars unless the arrangement requires it. More than most performers, guitarists on loud stages often need less in their IEMs rather than more — too much in the mix causes them to play tentatively.

Lead vocalist: Their own voice prominent — vocalists need to hear themselves for pitch accuracy. The mix they need under their voice depends heavily on their experience: experienced vocalists often want minimal underneath (keys or guitar for pitch, click or kick for time); less experienced vocalists often want more of the full band mix for security. Lead to lead vocals mix is the most personal and requires the most performer feedback to dial in correctly.

Keys/other: Full band reference at moderate levels, with their own instrument clearly audible. Keys players often serve as the band’s pitch and harmonic reference point and benefit from hearing the full arrangement clearly.

Mono vs Stereo IEM Sends: The XR18’s Honest Limitation

This is one of the most important things to understand before building your monitor workflow on the XR18: each of the six aux sends delivers a mono signal. A mono IEM mix is fine for most live applications — it’s what the majority of working musicians use, and it covers the essential job of delivering a clear, controlled monitor mix to the performer’s ears without the complexity of stereo routing.

Stereo IEM mixes — where the left and right channels of the performer’s earphones receive different signals for a wider, more immersive monitoring experience — require two aux sends per performer. On the XR18, this means you can support three stereo IEM mixes before running out of aux sends. For a five-piece band where everyone wants stereo, you’d need a mixer with more aux sends.

The practical reality: most bands starting with IEM monitoring on the XR18 should build mono mixes first, get comfortable with the workflow, and evaluate whether stereo is actually necessary for their situation before investing the aux sends it requires. Stereo IEMs are genuinely better in controlled environments — more space, better separation — but the difference matters more in some applications (worship, theater, controlled productions) than others (loud rock, dense band environments where the overall mix is already busy).

Using the X Air App for Individual Mix Control

One of the most powerful features of the XR18 for live bands is the ability for each performer to adjust their own monitor mix from their own device during the show. The X Air app allows you to lock a specific device to a specific aux send — the bassist’s phone shows only Aux 3 (their mix) with no access to the main mix or other performers’ sends.

Setting this up: in the X Air app’s connection settings or admin panel, you can configure which sends a given device can access and control. The performer downloads X Air and connects to the XR18’s Wi-Fi network, and their phone becomes their personal monitor controller. They can bring up their own guitar, ask for more vocal, or reduce the kick drum level between songs without involving the engineer or disrupting anyone else’s mix.

For most bands, this eliminates the mid-show “can I get more of myself in my ears” conversation and puts that control directly where it belongs — with the performer who knows what they need in that moment.

Mixing Station Integration: Expanding Your Monitor Mix Options

If you’ve moved from the X Air app to Mixing Station for your primary mixing workflow — which we cover in detail in our Mixing Station app guide — the monitor mix workflow is similar but the interface offers more flexibility. Mixing Station’s Personal Monitoring mode lets a performer access their own aux send mix in a simplified interface that hides everything else, which is cleaner than the X Air app’s approach for less technically experienced band members.

MixMode, available on systems like the Shure PSM300, allows a performer to blend two independent sends in their bodypack — meaning the engineer sends a main monitor mix on one aux send and the performer’s isolated instrument on a second, and the performer controls their own instrument level relative to the band mix from the bodypack itself. This is one of the more powerful combinations available to bands using the XR18 for IEM monitoring.

Gain Staging for Monitor Channels

Gain staging for monitor mixes follows the same principles as main mix gain staging but with one critical difference: the performer’s perception of their monitor mix is not the same as your perception of it from the engineer position. What sounds appropriate to you at the aux send master level may be too loud, too soft, or tonally wrong for the performer actually wearing the IEMs.

The right process: set your aux send channel levels and master levels to what seems appropriate based on the relative balance you’re building, then ask the performer what they’re actually hearing and adjust based on their feedback. Don’t assume that what you’re reading on the meters or hearing through the monitor speaker translates accurately to what the performer experiences in their IEMs — the earphone model, fit, and isolation level all affect perceived loudness significantly.

Start every monitor soundcheck with the performer in their IEMs, playing or singing at performance level, and build the mix from silence rather than bringing everything up at once. This gives you a clear sense of what’s working and what isn’t before the mix gets complex. Our guide on gain staging for live sound covers the full input gain process that all of this builds on.

When to Step Up to a Dedicated Personal Mixer

The XR18’s six aux sends cover the monitoring needs of most small bands well, but there are situations where a dedicated personal mixing system makes more sense. If your band has more than six members, if multiple performers want stereo IEM mixes, or if you want to give performers more nuanced control over their own mix than the X Air app provides, a dedicated personal mixing system distributes that control more elegantly.

The Behringer Powerplay P16 integrates directly with the XR18 via the AES50 digital connection, giving each performer their own 16-channel personal mixer where they control all 16 inputs independently with physical knobs — no app required. For bands where the XR18’s aux send approach is hitting its limits, the Powerplay P16 is the natural step up that keeps you within the Behringer ecosystem.

Saving and Recalling Monitor Mix Scenes

Once you’ve built monitor mixes that work for your band, save them as a scene in the X Air app immediately. The XR18’s scene recall function saves every channel level, aux send assignment, and output configuration — meaning the monitor mixes you spent a full soundcheck building can be recalled at the start of the next show in seconds rather than rebuilt from scratch.

A practical scene management approach: save a “rehearsal” scene and a “live” scene separately. Rehearsal mixes often have more of everything since stage volume is lower and performers want more reference in their ears. Live mixes are often slightly leaner because stage volume fills in some of what the IEMs provide. Having both scenes saved means you’re not undoing soundcheck settings every time you switch between contexts.

If you’re using Mixing Station, the scene and preset management is even more flexible — channel presets can transfer between different mixer models, which means the monitor mix structure you’ve built for the XR18 can serve as a starting point if you ever move to a larger console. Our Mixing Station app guide covers the preset and scene system in detail.

Practical Tips From Real Shows

Build monitor mixes before the main mix, not after. Performers need to hear themselves during soundcheck to give you accurate feedback. If you’re still building the main mix while asking performers to evaluate their monitor mixes, you’re doing two things at once poorly. Establish working monitor mixes first, then dial in the main mix while the band plays.

The “more me” problem is almost always a level problem, not a mix problem. When a performer asks for more of themselves in their IEMs, the instinct is to bring up their channel in their aux send. Often the real fix is bringing everything else down slightly rather than pushing their own instrument louder — the result is the same (they can hear themselves better) without pushing the total level in their ears higher.

Use Ethernet for the main engineer tablet during shows. As covered in the XR18 review, Wi-Fi in live venues is unreliable. For the device you’re actively mixing on during the show, Ethernet is non-negotiable. Band members’ phones on the XR18’s Wi-Fi network for their own monitor mix access is fine — they’re making smaller, less consequential adjustments.

Label every output before the show. Run a strip of gaffer tape on the rear panel and mark which XLR output goes to which performer. When something isn’t working on stage mid-show, you need to be able to find the right output immediately without reading tiny panel labels in a dark side-stage environment.

Set a volume limit for performer-controlled mixes. When performers can adjust their own IEM level from their phones, the temptation is to push the level higher when something sounds wrong — which usually makes things worse, not better. Brief the band before the show on the monitoring workflow and set a clear expectation that level adjustments should be small and iterative rather than dramatic.

Final Thoughts

Knowing how to build a monitor mix on the XR18 properly transforms what the mixer can do for your band’s live performance — and it’s one of the most consistently underutilized capabilities of the mixer for bands that haven’t taken the time to learn it. than anything an analog board at this price delivers, the per-performer app control eliminates a whole class of mid-show monitor complaints, and the scene recall system means every show starts from a solid foundation rather than from zero.

The learning curve is real but short. Two or three dedicated rehearsal sessions focused specifically on monitor mix workflow — rather than just using the sessions to play — will get your band to a place where the monitoring situation supports the performance rather than competing with it.

Frequently Asked Questions