What are the alternatives to using Behringer P16-M Powerplay Personal Headphone Mixers?

Question

This question is related to the accepted answer to Can the Behringer XR18 XAIR Digital Mixer be used as a breakout box? Please read before offering an answer.

I also want to provide band members with the capability of using the recording XR18 to allow band members to do their own personal monitor mixes on their own personal monitors (earphones). If I use the accepted answer, all of the 8 available outputs on the XR18 will be used for passing instrument signal through to the sound guy's mixer. Behringer's answer is to use a Behringer P16-M Powerplay Personal Headphone Mixer for each member of the band daisy-chained from the XR18 UltraNet port. But the PowerPlays cost US $300 each.

What are the alternatives to using Behringer P16-M Powerplay Personal Headphone Mixers in this use case?

Answer 1

If you don't mind mono mixes, you can use each of the 6 busses as a separate mix. Each person can control their own mix by logging into that bus with an Android tablet. Each bus can be connected to a powered speaker or wireless headset.

PS: you will need to use an external router because the internal one only handles 4 connections to the XR18.

Answer 2

tl;dr: There is not really any alternative.

The Behringer P16 Personal Mixing System is literally 10 times cheaper than the competitors. The main competitors are Aviom and the Allen&Heath ME system. For Aviom, just the injector alone (i.e. the component that takes analog inputs and encodes it into Aviom's protocol) is 1500€. The Behringer equivalent, the P16-I, costs 180€ … and you don't even need it because that functionality (converting analog into P16 Ultranet) is built into the X Air already.

It's really that simple:

If you want every musician to be able to have their individual stereo mix out of all possible inputs, then you need either a separate mixer for every musician or a large enough mixing desk so that you have enough aux busses (and outputs) to provide a separate mix for every musician. In the former case, you also need a splitter so that you can split the inputs to multiple mixers. (And those splitters are not cheap either.)

The X Air gives you the conversion to Ultranet for free, and the P16 gives you the mixer for every musician at an unbeatable price.

Answer 3

If you want just a single monitor mix for IEMs for all band members, you can assign all the X AIR buses to the headphone jack and plug a headphone splitter amp into the jack. Not individually configurable but only costs about $30 for everybody, not including the IEMs.

Reference: In Ear Monitoring with the Behringer X-Air XR18