So people online would be tempted to turn up the live stream during speaking or turn down the audio during worship. There are a couple of things they'll probably notice immediately.įirst, typically, music is louder than speaking. Sure, it will sound horrible in the sanctuary, but it should sound great in headphones and online. If your church isn't meeting in person currently, maybe just have your engineer mix for the live stream or recording with the PA off altogether. Have them remix based on what they need to get better sound. Now, make sure the mix your engineer hears is an aux send.
Have an audio engineer download the remote app for your mixing desk and run the video with embedded audio over SDI to a separate room and convert it back to HDMI connected to a TV. If you doubt that an engineer could positively affect the sound by creating a mix that's unaffected by the mix made for the live environment, try this. With the Behringer X32 and other digital mixing desks, you now have an option to try out an isolated mix. It's better to know based on mixing with good sound isolating (not cancelling) headphones or, even better, what it sounds like in an acoustically isolated space. Online, though, you wouldn't have any natural sound from them UNLESS they're mic'd and mixed into the rest of the sound.Īs a result, the mix for the live stream shouldn't be mixed based on what the sound engineer thinks it should sound like, looking at meters and making a guess. You should probably never send the same audio that goes to the PA to the live stream. If you have, for example, acoustic drums, in person, they're probably so loud that you have to take measures to dampen them, like putting them in a cage or behind a plexiglass barrier. That said, you should probably never send the same audio that goes to the PA to the live stream. In fact, adding in a little ambience can go a long way to fix what ails a mix which might seem dry without it. So, in addition to adding a little reverb, you might also add an ambient mic to mimic the sound of the in-person audio for the online congregation. That's because the phone microphone picks up ambience from the room. Some have found that when doing a live stream from a phone, the audio from singers might sound less intelligible, but also better. In person, depending on how your room is built and treated acoustically, you might have natural reverb that adds to the sound. Sure, great singers may not need help, but there's something about adding in a little reverb that helps hide minor mistakes. If you merely amplify the sound, but the audience doesn't hear it in a space that has enough presence, any mistake is amplified, too. If you've ever been to a party with karaoke, you probably noticed something about what they do to make marginal singers sound better. So, how do you overcome this issue? There's actually a lot you can do.įirst, you need to realize what some of the ingredients to a pleasant sounding mix are. What sounds good in-person often sounds horrible online, especially music. Once people figure out the video and internet portions of the live stream, there is nearly always a problem that comes up. The goal of mixing for a live stream isn't that people notice how great your mix is, but that they don't notice your mix at all.