[darwin]

What do you guys think of this idea? I want to give 3 musicians independent control over their headphone mix. The musicians will be located in 3 different places. I'd like them to have volume control over a stereo drum mix, stereo guitar, mono bass, and mono vox. I'm trying to spend as little as possible without compromising significantly on the sound and flexibility that the musicians get. So, here's my idea:

Out of the analog mixer, I will send 6 balanced aux sends into a balanced patchbay that is in the control room. This patch bay will be set up such that I can mult each aux send. The mult will allow me to distribute each send to two different locations.

The first location will be the vocal booth that is in a room directly above the control room about 20 feet away. The 6 sends will travel the 20 feet of balanced, mogami cable, and are ultimately plugged into a small mixer that has balanced inputs (either Soundcraft's Spirit Notepad or Yamaha's MG/102). This accomplishes the headphone balance for the vocalist.

The second location will be the drum room. In this room, there will be two musicians playing (guitarist and drummer). The guitarist's amp will be isolated in an adjacent closet, and the guitarist is in the room with the drummer. The 6 sends will reach this room via approximately 50 feet of balanced, mogami instrument cable. Those 6 sends are then inserted into another balanced and multed patchbay. One half of the multed sends will go to the drummer's personal mixer, and the other half will go to the guitarist.

Even though I'm using balanced connections, I'm unsure about what impact the level of multing will have on sound quality. Since these mixers are $100, this would be a pretty cheap experiment to run, but I'd be interested in hearing what your thoughts are about this. I figure it would run me about $400 for 3 mixers and 1 patch bay.