Live Mixing for Streaming Internet

[traywig]

Hi there. I am learning to mix our worship service for our church, which goes live over the net. I've only had limited experience in mixing but I am loving it! We have two drum kits, percussion, synth, keyboard, elec guitar, acoustic guitar, elec. bass, 6 piece brass, lead vocals, backing vocals and 50 member choir. Anyone out there got any advice for me...please!!

[B3Wannabe]

I'm just getting into the engineering aspect of music, so I can't tell you much about that, but I would like to hear you guys! What is your church's site?

[traywig]

Hi there. Thanks for the interest. We are at www.destinychurch.org.nz/web_broadcasts.asp
You'll have to check there for the times we netcast in your area.
I'd love some feedback.
We just hooked up some old computer speakers in our studio to check what the sound quality was like. Huge difference of course...this made the mixing alot easier to accomplish. We had initially thought of watching the broadcast live thru our laptop, but there is a delay so that wasn't quite effective.
Anyway, please have a listen and send me your opinion...Thats open to all!
Cheers

[CATRON]

From the mixing aspect of releasing a song to the public it depends on your flavor/feel of the music. Because with different producers come, different mixes. But most of the time there are very few facts that remain the same through out ALL song mixing. And that is the law of volume.
And basically all that is, is there is a speical order tracks should be leveled at. Meaning, The Lead vocals should always be on top, no matter what. Then Backgroungvocals/choir. Then the main instruments should try to be leveled all at the same dB point. (Piano,Organ,Drums,Bass,Guitar) No other instruments should be at or above the main instruments level. (of course with speical exceptions) Then after the main instruments the aux. instruments are leveled below those. Then the audience should barely be heard. Except during solo's. And even though the organ is in the main instruments group. it should be leveled farly low. The art of mixing is a very long post so just ask ?'s and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.

HOLLA

[traywig]

Thanks Catron,
I'll take your advice and try it out on Sunday. So do you think that mixing is the same for the internet as it is live? We try to mix the audience in, to give it a bit of atmosphere.

[CATRON]

Personally I think that it's a totally different mix for the too. Because for #1 when you're mixing live you have greater ability to determine what you want people to hear out of what type of speaker (moniters,subwoofers,loud speakers,overhead speakers.) And with that the different speakers have different parameters on who that music will sound. For Instance, in a subwoofer mainly the best type of sounds that will be produced out of that speaker will be Bass,Kick,A little Organ and Piano. you won't do very well trying to have a Trumpet going through the subs at the same rate as the Bass,Kick...ect... so with ALL of that being said, in live settings you have greater control over the internet. On the internet you can't determine what instruments come out of the subs and main speakers. You can only dertermine which side i's coming out of. The only way you can attempt to do that is by using a HEAVY EQ system. And that system would drown out every other instrument with it being SO heavy. So again Mixing audio for the internet is a total different ball game than mixing for live situations.

HOLLA

[slsmith1913]

How's it going. Whether you're mixing in mono or stereo, and regardless of the # of inputs you're using, you want to put a compressor/limiter on the master output. The reason being since you're broadcasting live, you do not want to clip (Especially in the digital realm). Digital cliping is the worse. When broadcasting over radio waves the FCC has strict restrictions on output levels, therefore limiters are used to keep levels from exceeding threshold. Over the internet, the signal is digital so you'd use it to keep from the worst error in digital transmission.

What type of mic set up do you have now? What type of mics?

[CATRON]

How's it going. Whether you're mixing in mono or stereo, and regardless of the # of inputs you're using, you want to put a compressor/limiter on the master output. The reason being since you're broadcasting live, you do not want to clip (Especially in the digital realm). Digital cliping is the worse. When broadcasting over radio waves the FCC has strict restrictions on output levels, therefore limiters are used to keep levels from exceeding threshold. Over the internet, the signal is digital so you'd use it to keep from the worst error in digital transmission.

What type of mic set up do you have now? What type of mics?

  Excellent Pointz  And Tipz

[traywig]

Well, we're not getting the BEST sound over the net....yet!. We are getting a bit of distortion - mainly because we've got no $$$ left for the compressors needed. We have 3 166XL's down in the main service. And our desk is pretty ancient - the pots are on their last legs....the contacts are so worn and dirty. Praying for a new desk...which will cost about $40,000 New Zealand dollars.

Our Mic's? We have The usual Shure radio Mics and some Seinheissers for our lead vocals. Our Backing Vocals use SM58's but we only have 2 BV's in our Mix - (lack of channels). We have 4 shotguns for our choir. some sm57's for brass section. A synth, a keyboard. Electric guitar. Elec. Bass. 2 DrumKits and Percussion Kit...Yep thats about it.  And we are trying to fit them all on a 32 Channel desk!

We found- through practice, that our Mix - sounding amazing in the Studio , wasn't so great over the Net. The high frequencies cut through so clearly it sounded unnatural. So pulling back on female vocals and brass...

We send out on Mono. Not quite sure how thats affecting our Mix though.

Cheers. Enjoying (and using) everyones advice.
Thanks Y'all.

[CATRON]

Well Hears a suggestion. Since it sounds like you all are short on money. Try to buy a 16 channel mixer. With that mixer you can just route all of the INSTRUMENTS to that mixer. and connect the output bus channels to the empty channels of the old mixer. This way you will have more space and you can have EVERYTHING going through the system including the audience.

[slsmith1913]

Good thought CATRON. Just make sure that you match the impedance from that mixer to the main mix.



Traywig,

yea its prertty much trial and error. I can guarantee that it is the acoutical space that you are mixing in. Whether a studio, or control room, if it isn't acoustically tuned with traps and diffusors, then you'll run into those problems. Take a perfect mix, then play it in your car and you're like, "what happened to the mix i just did?" It sounds like in your mixing space you have a roll off in your upper frequencies, so you basically compensate to make up for it. Then taking that same mix into a space that is a bit better controlled, the upper frequencies over kill.

What I say is, try to help the room out (is it symetrical?) or just keep it in mind when mixing.

Oh about the mono vs stereo thing, it makes a difference cause mixing mono, you have all the frequencies competing to play out of 1 channel vs stereo when you can create space between various instruments as you wish. Creating this space also puts less stress on your output, therefore less likelihood of distortion.

[traywig]

Keeping you all up to date with how we are going...

Still no new gear...working on bare bones still. A mixing desk and straight out.
We had a Pro-Tools set-up, but our Digirack 002 died so has been sent out to be fixed. We were using it as a back up only. To record our services in case our live feed to the Internet died (which it has...interesting lesson there!) , and to help me critique my own Mix.
I start official training next year, so My levels shall only go up!

Keep listening. Bless Ya.

P.S. I start work on our church album in 2 months...as a runner. But I'm blessed all round.