FOH with UFX3, 12MIC, TotalMixFX and MainStage for 'subgroups'

I got through my first job as FOH engineer (admittedly amateur, though paid a little) this afternoon. It was a setup of keyboard, 3 acoustic guitars and 8 singers. So no drums, and I have personal relationship with the band so many factors that made it a good gig to test using TotalMix FX for FOH.

Not sure if anyone here is interested but since I learn so much from this forum I hope this is a little payback. The combination with MainStage makes it very interesting I think. I would like feedback as I tend to overlook simpler solutions while I thought I was being creative.

Gear & Software
- RME UFX3 + RME 12Mic, MADI coupled, setup backstage next to the podium
- Swissonic router, Palmer DI’s
- Apple MacBookPro M2
- Apple iPad Pro running Totalmix Remote
- TotalMix FX (2.0 new design) as mixer, Apple MainStage for creating mixing groups

MainStage & Loopback for mixing based on ‘subgroups’
- Assuming there is no way to do output channel to output channel routing
- I created 3 loopbacks ‘subgroups’ UFX output channels using MADI unused channels.
- MainStage I set up to feed these loops back to the main output
- Three subgroups by setting up stereo loopbacks: Keys, Vocals and Guitar
So signal chain: Mic input → AN out MADI 50/51(loopback) → MainStage in → MainStage out → Software channel -> Main AN OUT

Totalmix Layouts for mixing the subgroups
- Each subgroup had their own layout
- so e.g. for ‘Guitars’ only the input channels and software playback and loopback channels relevant were shown. Same for ‘Keys and Vocals’

Findings:
- The colour strips in the new 2.0 are really helpful in reading your screen, even though I couldn’t use them when walking around with my iPad most of the time. Really hope the remote apps will get the same treatment

- The loopback combined with MainStage to feed back into the RME works (and thus create subgroups) without any glitches or issues, so hypothetically I could create a lot of groups or even have single channels go out of the UFX and treat them with plugins in MainStage then feed them back.
    - I considered using Fader Groups for this, but would the have missed the opportunity to do EQ/Dynamics on the subgroup which proved very helpful.
    - It was also helpful as I had to also provide a mix to the backroom where that main PA mix did not reach, so just an extra output with the same subgroup (and with slightly different balance indeed) helped

- Found myself using the layouts when mixing a lot (!) when I wanted to mix the subgroups, I’d click e.g. the vocals layout, being able to change one of the vocals, not hindered by having to scroll through the inputs (which are not that many but on an iPad already scrolling necessary.

- In the Layouts it would have helped if the focus on a certain output (in my case a loopback output that was eg the vocal subgroup) could be saved with the layout, so that I didn’t accidentally change the Main mix, but automatically selection of the ‘subgroup’ output came with it. I found I used the layouts this way a lot. Really helpful.

- Still I would have preferred the loopback to loop not only outward to the software but ideally to the corresponding input channels as well (I know big feedback risks, no idea if it fits the architecture at all, but I could have done without MainStage then

- Using mainstage now opens up many possibilities for insert effect having seen how it works. No latency issues at all.

- Did not find good use for Snapshots other than one extra for the talking in between songs. And that was tricky as you keep switching  you want the updates on channels strips on both snapshots so you end up doing fast re-storing (kudo’s that it is doable on the iPad UI)

- Being able to set things up with colours and subgroups on the offline device was very helpful, but of course I would have preferred being able to load this workspace setup into the real TotalMix/ufx/12mic in stead of re-creating it when I figured it all out. I understand this is not possible and not the purpose of the offline setup. But I keep dreaming