Your Church Broadcast Sounds Bad

Why does your church broadcast sound bad? Do you NEED a second console or a DAW to get it sounding good? (Hopefully not, since that takes a 2nd audio person in a department that’s already stretched thin.) Here are 5 reasons why your church broadcast might sound bad, and some ways you can fix it.
Vocal EQ - How to Mix Live Vocals:
• Vocal EQ - How to Mix ...
Vocal Compression - How to Mix Live Vocals:
• Vocal Reverb | Live Vo...
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[@BrotherCalebMusic]

haha nobody leaves Church humming the kick drum

[@DbiPro]

😅indo

[@mhgreen]

Totally agree with reverb covering pitch issues. As a trombone player, a little bit of slide or lip vibrato can absolutely cover a multitude of pitch/slide technique issues!

[@baron1c]

EQ the room with pink noise. That helped us so much. Then post fader bus for the broadcast mix. Everything pulled down 5-10 db but pastor and guest speaker at 0db. I mix with the ipad from the middle of the room with my ears. Then I’ll fine tune the broadcast mix with budget in ears as most people listen to the stream on their phone

[@lukedavis3953]

Great video! Broadcast audio is definitely something the church is working on improving as a whole.

[@dwaynearthur1476]

Oh Sweet, the Saga continues......... 😎. I'm here for it! Sure, it's a challenge to get it right, 1 of my battles is bad room acoustics in rental Venues.

[@andrewcroce8177]

I find that calibrating the EQ on the mains helps immensely. I did that by setting up a reference mic in the middle of the room, blasting pink noise, and adjusting the main EQ until the RTA for the mic was mostly flat. As a result, the sound in the headphones is almost identical to the sound in the room. It also frees up the channel EQs for mixing musically instead of targeting room resonances. There are also systems that do the calibration automatically, which is great for cases where you’re constantly changing venues.

[@annasoH323]

[looking at title] Well, tell us what you really think. [end joke] Thanks for covering this James. Our small team is doing the best with what we have. Our worship guy would like to improve our broadcast mix but unsure about how far we can stretch our resources (personnel, knowledge/skillsets, and equipment/financial). Always appreciate your approach!

[@budget-church-livestreaming]

Great tips, for churches of any size! Even if a perfect mix is unattainable for most, a good mix is definitely possible, no matter the situation. Just gotta know where to attack it from and put in the time

[@paulmanoogian7646]

I find if you have a really well positioned mix in-house then your broadcast will also sound good. All the little imperfections that are missed or just not heard too well in the live room due to room acoustics are amplified and totally heard on the broadcast so I find that mixing for the next few days after recording rehearsal makes things sound a lot better.

[@AttawayAudio]

Absolutely - if you have a well-tuned PA and a good acoustic space, your FOH mixes can translate pretty well. Especially if you mix FOH like a record.

[@factsoverfeelings5833]

You should do reviews of other churches' live streams. I think it would be very helpful.

[@YourHaloCreations]

Hey dude. Thanks for your help here. I have adopted your post-fader bus method & it improved my stream mix greatly. Curious what you do for bus processing on speech/pastor's mic.

[@brianredmacmillan5601]

Good stuff. We run a post fade mix through a matrix and a video switcher before it hit boxcast. There's just a little bit of compression on the bus and matrix. There's a multiband compressor on the bus and a limiter on the matrix. Then there's more comression and limiting on the switcher. Our stream always translates from the house mix with no dynamic range issues, all done from foh with one engineer.

[@AttawayAudio]

That's fantastic! Glad you got that dialed in :)

[@brianredmacmillan5601]

Well you're one of the guys that helped get us there. I cant tell you how much about mixing I've learned from your videos. Many thanks.

[@houstishaldorsen469]

So you mentioned mixing with in-ears, and that your preference wasn't a clear cut answer. Our broadcast setup is in a separate room, and I prefer to always mix with in-ears personally. I've been told that doing so might not be best though, so I was curious to hear more of your input on that? Thank you James!

[@AttawayAudio]

In the same room as the PA, I prefer in-ears for the isolation. In a quieter room that's untreated, I prefer headphones or in-ears (more tactile response on the low-end), but with a plugin like Waves Nx Virtual Mixroom kzbin.info/www/bejne/qpDZemOfoZKbZtUsi=tIjSayMtmeaKyeuS

[@permanenceinchange2326]

This is us. Our broadcast is post-fader, so that helps, but everything is going right into the mix. I'm going to try the buses, great tip! Thanks! A thing I'm not sure of is whether the platform we're on has got some sound processing. Sometimes when it sounds weird, we don't know where it's coming from... By the way, for monitoring we use a good isolated drummer's headphone from Vic Firth. Good idea or not so good?

[@richardhume2811]

Very interesting points. We have overcome some of these by having a separate person mixing the KZbin stream. Main mix done on the Presonus StudioLive 32, Stream mix done using a tablet mixing the aux that goes to KZbin via Atem Extreme so no latency. The stream mixing person has access to a separate room and uses headphones. We use some reverb on the vocals and have a room mic setup to pick up congregation singing and responses which are part of the mix and help people at home feel like they are present.. The drums are mic'ed up for the KZbin mix. everything is EQ'd and the KZbin mix uses compression. The person mixing for KZbin can see the overall sound level going out from the Atem Extreme video mixer to KZbin and so can control the volume between band and preacher to make sure that everything is always just below the red. It's a lot of hard work as we are a small church and everyone is trained on both video and sound. It takes 4 people to run video, graphics and audio.

[@AttawayAudio]

Glad you have a great system worked out! It's no small feat getting all those volunteers trained

[@scottdotjazzman]

I'm doing the best I can! 😢 😂 In all seriousness, I've worked hard to help us get ours half decent sounding. What surprises me the most is how many people have come to our church simply because of the live stream, despite how bad it sounds

[@AttawayAudio]

Maybe people aren't as judgy about technical presentation as we imagine they are?

[@princejjp94]

I am mixing on an X32 through a bus, when I plug in a USB and record service for playback the mix sound AMAZING but when I listen back to the live stream on the KZbin and Facebook, the mix is trash. How do you approach a situation like this?

[@MikeCookMusic]

I think my church falls into this topic... I've gone to Church in person and the FOH Mix through the main speakers sounds decent (I can clearly hear the Vocals, Keys, Guitars, some of the drums, and a little bit of Bass Guitar)... But the times watching the live stream/broadcast on KZbin all I hear is mostly Vocals & Acoustic Guitars and some Keys, I can't hear the Bass Guitar & the drums sound so compressed it's like they are playing in a "Boxey Tunnel" far, far away... I should share this video with the Sound Guy at my Church... I wish I knew a way to tell him what's what... from one Sound Guy to another... but I do understand everyone doesn't hear the same way as the next person... BTW - When I'm home I watch the live stream on TV that has a Soundbar connected... Like you said when the volume is turned almost all the way up you never know when something loud will come through... let alone Hearing the music & Speech I like to feel the sound... I like the Big Sound... Here's Proof of what I'm talking about... kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHLNmHmIZ755nas

[@mansosound]

Boy this bring me back recording an aux mix on meters, feel, headphones and experience lol

[@AttawayAudio]

Don't miss those days

[@larenrouse]

what happens when we connect our camera to the mixer only to find later that the camera did not pick up sound or there's static.

[@matthewpiatt]

Our broadcast mix is off in its own world for a very good reason. Second room, Second board, Second engineer, and Waves SoundGrid. The only thing we share are preamps and some talkback mics.

[@AttawayAudio]

Nice! Glad you've got the resources and talent to make it happen!

[@arturts987]

Hi! I just listened my church online in yutube, and compared the sound with what I recordinded in the DAW (Reaper) with the exact same settings, and through the same monitor speakers. And this is shocking! The youtube boradcast sounds awful comparing to the record! Why is that? Is it possible to fix that somehow? I takle dound from the mixed, do all the editing in reaper and pass this via NDI to the vMix streaming PC.

[@geoffreyngure4886]

Great Video! I have a question though. What is best solution when we are cliping in LR bus meter?. I have done gain staging for all channels (vocals, drums and instruments) with enough headroom. Meters hitting around -12db. Then the channels are grouped into subgroups for drums , instruments and vocals which are then added to LR bus. The meters for sub groups are all lower (around -18db) yet the LR bus is clipping. This is on an M32 console.

[@paulmanoogian7646]

Sometimes on those consoles each channel has a Mono Bus and a Stereo Bus. If both the mono and stereo bus are activated for every channel your gain can spike out the LR. I have an x32 so not sure how similar they are but its caused problems for me in the past. Also sometimes you may not be aware that some channels are being sent somewhere you didn't know about so make sure to check your channel sends. If everything is gainstaged correctly in the channel strips and subgroups a solution you can use is create a DCA that has every single channel sent into it then lower that fader and the LR Bus will go down and all your mix ratios will stay the same. IF you don't get enough volume then with your LR bus peaking around -12 -10 I've found that to be the sweet spot on the x32 then you'll need to increase the gain on your in-house speakers to get your desired volume level. Hope this helps.

[@geoffreyngure4886]

Hi @paulmanoogian7646. Thanks for the tips. I'll try them out this week, see how things turn out.

[@jasonkuzman9630]

Agreeing with the other comment, check both your metering and routing. Not familiar with M32, but I've seen both these issues cause confusion. Check routing. Are channels routed to both LR and Groups, giving you unexpected summing? Check metering point on channels/groups/LR bus. Is the meter pre or post all inserts and processing that could add gain?

[@matthewpiatt]

I recommend gain staging lower. Try starting with your input channels around -18dBFS. Also make sure you aren’t summing anything that could cause a boost. Also try sending a steady test signal of pink noise at a known level into an input and check the meters for each stage along the way to see what is adding or removing volume. Also try this with all your input/bus/master faders at unity (0dB). You’re sure to find it that way.

[@robfriedrich2822]

At the moment I have the problem, that our sound in internet streams doesn't sound good. Wrong balance between vocals and accompaniment, vocals too loud, in the room they aren't, plus some parts of the music aren't audible in the stream and everything goes through the PA.

[@robfriedrich2822]

We have an expert, who may have good skills about TV production, but he fails about the live stream sound, there are parts of the arrangement missing. At least he shows me, that he is the boss over the streaming content and it feels to me, like the cook, who is required to accept, that the waiter doesn't serve the side dishes. But my pastor has the rule "an expert never fails".

[@DbiPro]

If the live streams sounds bad the in ears do too

[@princedavid6241]

Hi man, how do you reduce latency so your changes can be close to real time?

[@lukedavis3953]

A lot of latency is caused by your internet upload speed and how stream is being sent to internet. Additionally, the output quality of stream needs to be consistent and not drop frames so that audio gets off further.

[@AttawayAudio]

I have a video on this coming soon :)

[@DbiPro]

If the broadcast sound bad the live mix does too

[@sword10song]

Hi y’all. I’m not a pro by any means… but my problem with my broadcast sound is that the signal from my mixer is so hot that when I listen on KZbin is super distorted so I have to lower the main almost to nothing and sometimes I still get a bit distortion, I’m going from my presonus studio live 32sx usin one of the Mixes straight to the Atem mini I realize I should add an audio interface so I did but I continue to have the same problem… anyways anyone have any solutions for that?? 😢😢😢

[@AttawayAudio]

Are you going into a mic input on your interface? You might have too much level going into it. But it's hard to sus out in a youtube comment :)

[@sword10song]

yes is certently hard... I am going into the input channel in the interface. @@AttawayAudio

[@allenpendleton8767]

You should rarely rotate musicians and sound engineers. It's harder to get consistency when you have different people all the time behind the console or behind the drums.

[@AttawayAudio]

I guess it depends on your values that go beyond tech and music. Is it important for families to worship together as regular congregants? Or rotate serving in another capacity, like kids ministry? Or even playing in the band and on the sound team? That's for the leadership team and volunteers to decide, IMO.

[@cwebb8859]

🤘 'promosm'