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Church Soundboard Live Stream Help

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Kres Lovric:
Good Afternoon,

I run my church's soundboard and i am new to doing this and need some guidance. We are live streaming every Sunday morning through youtube but not all of the instruments are coming through. The keyboard, lead vocal, backup vocals all come through clear and loud. the Drums are faint, the guitar cannot be heard. The sound in the church is perfect but its sounds totally different online. Could this be a physical issue like with one of the cables or snakes or is this a software issue with a setting in the main board?

thank you

Kres

Erik Jerde:

--- Quote from: Kres Lovric on August 22, 2021, 02:35:48 PM ---Good Afternoon,

I run my church's soundboard and i am new to doing this and need some guidance. We are live streaming every Sunday morning through youtube but not all of the instruments are coming through. The keyboard, lead vocal, backup vocals all come through clear and loud. the Drums are faint, the guitar cannot be heard. The sound in the church is perfect but its sounds totally different online. Could this be a physical issue like with one of the cables or snakes or is this a software issue with a setting in the main board?

thank you

Kres

--- End quote ---

Hey Kres, what you’re running into is the effect that the acoustic product of a given instrument has on the room mix.  Your drums and guitar are probably loud enough on their own that they need minimal (if any) reinforcement in the room.  When you listen to the same mix in a different space you then hear everything that is missing.

I’m assuming that the sources are coming into your console fine.

There’s a few ways to address this but it may depend on your audio console and how hard you’re push it it now.  For my church we have an x32 and I feed the broadcast mix off of a matrix.  That matrix is fed by a speakers, playback, and band aux..  The auxes are all postfader sends so that I can build a mix for the streams in my headphones and then as I adjust the room mix the stream mix just follows right along.

Mike Caldwell:
As Erik said your room mix is balanced referenced to the volume of the drum kit, guitar amp ect. directly in the room.

Do forget the volume that stage wedges add to the sound of the room, that is if your using wedges.

You need to create a separate mix for the live stream, what mixer do you have? Analog or digital the concept is the same provided you have an open aux/mix to work with.

Mute the PA system and hear how much volume is coming off the stage into the room.

Also you may want to start looking at ways to reduce the stage volume.

How big is the room?

Tim Weaver:
A recording off the board (or a livestream mix) is like a mirror for your mix. I would suggest recording the rehearsal then take a listen to that recording and adjust accordingly.

Everything that is too loud from the stage (drums, guitars, etc.) will not be very "loud" in the board mix. Things that don't have amps on stage (keys, acoustics, vocals) will be loud in the board mix. It's the opposite of what is happening in the room.

The best way to fix this is to create a whole new seperate mix just for livestream in which you can put equal amounts of everything in that mix. Of course you won't be able to tell what this sounds like very well while you are mixing the house, so it's a big comprimise.

What kind of console are you using? Are you running monitors or in-ears? Are those monitors fed from the same console thats doing the house and livestream?

BrianSimmons:
As everyone has suggested, this is a pretty common issue because you have sound in the room other than from the main L&R sends.  It could be accoustic instruments on stage (like your drums) are so loud that you don't really have to reinforce them by sending a lot of their volume through the L&R sends.  It could be other speakers on stage (amps or monitor wedges) that include instruments/singers so much that again you don't end up sending very much through the L&R sends.

As suggested, it is best if you can set up a mix/buss that is used only for the stream.  Best practice is to have someone (other than the FOH engineer) monitoring and mixing that buss, but that may not be possible in your church.

If it is not possible, the next best thing is to set up that buss with all the individual inputs set for "Post Fade" sends.  This means that any change by the FOH engineer with be reflective in the broadcast.  If no one is monitoring the broadcast mix, this is better than a "Prefade" send because if something is suddenly too loud in the house suddenly, it is probably suddenly too loud in the broadcast too.  By having the sends set to Post Fader, any changes made during the service will also occur in the broadcast.

The one thing you have to do to make this work is taking time (probably during the rehearsal) to set the overall levels in the broadcast mix.  You say that some elements are too soft in the broadcast mix (like drums and guitar).  You will want to turn those sends up higher in the broadcast mix than the other inputs so that you get a decent overall mix.  Then if the guitarist rips a solo at 15db louder and the FOH engineer turns them down by 12db, it will also turn the broadcast mix down by 12db.  But it still keeps the overall ratio set during rehearsal. (If the broadcast buss has it's guitar sends set to +5db while the FOH mix has the guitar set at -10db, a 3db change by the FOH engineer changes both the FOH and broadcast mix by 3db, but from their respective level they started at.

Hopefully that makes sense. 

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