23rd November 2018

Gear Head

I work at a local venue as a sound engineer and also have my 'studio business' on the side beginning to grow a bit. I thought it would be interesting to offer live recording of shows as a service as well, so I've just landed a show where I'll both be mixing FOH and doing live multitrack recordings for two of the bands (a healthy weekend of pay, if I do say so myself).
But, this show is out of town and, consequently, at a totally different venue, so I'm going to be using different equipment than I'm used to. The mixer provided by the 'totally different venue' for this show is a tablet-controlled Behringer XR-18. I know this unit can be used for multitrack recording, so I'll be leaving my own interface at home (not going to move it unless I absolutely have to!) But I'm concerned about the XR-18's ability to handle FOH/Monitor mixing while simultaneously multitrack recording up to 16 channels of audio. As such, I'm prepared to take my own console with me to handle FOH and monitors while sending direct outs from each channel to the XR-18 for recording. But will this be necessary?
This may be more of me organizing my own thoughts, but here's how I'll break this down in my mind:
Scenario A: XR-18 handles both FOH/Monitors AND multitrack recording
Pros: Less equipment to setup and manage. Less potential points of failure.
Cons: Possible latency issues with FOH and monitors, possibility that the unity may outright freeze or crash. I'd have to use a tablet to mix from, which I hate with a burning passion.
Scenario B: Console handles FOH/Montiors, XR-18 handles multitrack recording
Pros: No latency problems, less workload on the unit so very little chance of freezing or crashing. No stupid tablet control of mixing.
Cons: More points of failure. More equipment to set up and manage.
I've attached rough diagrams for each scenario for the visual processor among us.
My question is this: should I plan to take a console and extra cables and such, or should I plan to just use the XR-18 for everything?
PS: I understand there are higher quality options for live recording (going scenario B, bypassing the x-air altogether and taking my 18i20 and octopre for the recording side) but this show is a few hours away from where I live and frankly I'm not taking any more equipment than necessary because, honestly, I'm already taking time out of an already busy schedule to do this show and don't feel like doing more work with it than I absolutely have to.

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