How I use ALT Input on the WING

There's a feature on the Behringer WING that I don't see a lot of people using but once you understand it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

It's called 'ALT Input', and it gives you a built-in backup plan for your most critical channels.

Every channel on the WING can have two inputs assigned to it: a 'Main' input and an 'ALT' (alternate) input. You can swap between them instantly - either channel by channel, or globally across the entire console.

This is incredibly useful for a few situations.

Think about your pastor's wireless headset. What happens if the battery dies mid-sermon, or the RF signal drops out?

With ALT input, you can pre-assign a backup wireless handheld (like Wireless 8) as the alternate input. If something goes wrong, you swap to the ALT input and keep going - no re-patching, no scrambling.

This works for vocalists too. Designate one wireless channel as your universal bail mic. If anyone's mic goes down during the service, hand them the backup and flip that channel to ALT.

If you have a B-Stage or a different performance area, ALT input lets you use the same channel for a singer or guitarist - just with a different microphone or input on the other stage.

The big benefit here is that all your EQ, compression, and plugins are already dialed in. When the artist moves to the B-Stage and you swap to ALT, you're not starting from scratch. The channel sounds the same because all the processing stays intact - you're just changing the source.

No duplicate channels. No re-patching. Just tap ALT and you're ready.

This is where ALT input really shines.

You can set your Main inputs as your live stage sources, and your ALT inputs as playback channels from the WING-Live card. Then with one button press, you swap the entire console to ALT and you're running a virtual sound check from last week's recording.

When the band arrives, flip back to Main and you're ready to go.

I go deeper on this in the full blog post, including how to set up the Custom Control button for one-tap virtual sound check switching.

For virtual sound check, you'll want to swap multiple channels at once. Go to 'SETUP > Audio' and you'll see 'Input Select' on the left side - this toggles the entire console between 'MAIN' and 'ALT'.

But not every channel follows this global toggle automatically. You need to enable the channels you want to follow it in the 'Global Input Select Enable' window.

I've seen some confusion about this, so let me clear it up: ALT input is not how you send audio to the WING-Live card for recording.

ALT input only selects which source is feeding into a channel. It doesn't affect where audio is sent out of the console.

If you're looking to route audio to the WING-Live card for recording, that's done in the 'Output Patch' under Output Group: Expansion Card - completely separate from ALT input.

Think of it this way: ALT input is for selecting a different source coming into the channel (great for virtual sound check). Recording output is about where the audio goes after processing (completely different routing).

Until next time,

Drew

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