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For a while now, I've been having a headphone nightmare. The setup I had at my last performance at The Shed was chaotic - a laptop, a pc, two keyboards, two mice, and worst of all - two pairs of headphones. Initially this sounded like a good idea - I could hear the never-ending stream of generations from the laptop through one pair of headphones, and then I could monitor the output of the moderated live set through the other.
It was not that easy though. Wires getting tangled were a biggy. Difference in sound quality led to apparent inconsistancies in dynamics. But the worst problem was the fact that, everytime I wanted to switch headphones, there were a brief few bars between, at which point I would become totally overwhelmed with the three audio outputs - my laptop, the PC monitoring ,and the noisy chaos within the venue.
For a little while I tried something kind of crazy - I wore both earbuds and headphones at the same time, and would use the mute button on the generator laptop to switch between the two. This seemed like it was going to be a quirky lifesaver, but unsurprisingly it came with problems. It hurt my ears, the wire-tangling was a nightmare, and ultimately it didn't really work unless under certain musical conditions.
But I think I have thought of a pretty obvious fix. I'm going to buy a second audio interface, and use that to output both the generator laptop, and monitor the moderator laptop. Using Max/MSP, I will route both signals into a crossfader. Left will reveal the generator output, and right will reveal the moderated output monitor. This way I will be able to keep the same pair of headphones on for the whole set, and will be able to conveniently switch between the two.