FoH stands for Front of House — the sound system and mixing position used to deliver sound to the audience.
An insert is a way of placing a processor directly into a signal path, so the signal passes through that processor before continuing.
For example, an engineer might insert a compressor on a lead vocal channel to control its dynamics.
There are three related concepts worth distinguishing:
| Term | Meaning | Example |
| Channel insert | Processing placed directly in an individual input channel's signal path | Compressor on lead vocal |
| Channel effects | Effects applied to an input, commonly using an auxiliary send and effects return | Reverb on lead vocal |
| Bus / master processing | Processing applied to a group of channels or the overall mix | Compressor on a drum bus |
Modern digital consoles can handle much of this internally, so a physical hardware insert isn't necessarily involved.
For your document, I wouldn't include a dedicated FoH insert column just yet. Since you're unsure what the term means and want to specify effects by name rather than detailed settings, we can document the band's desired processing without unnecessarily prescribing how the engineer implements it.
One question to keep in mind for later: do you want to specify preferred processing, or do you want to require particular processing? Those aren't quite the same thing.