Audio Tip – Helping or Hurting

Philosophically, you could probably apply this to a lot of things but in our recent training night @fc-Dallas, I was trying to communicate the need to periodically ask myself, as an operator, “Am I helping or hurting what I am tweaking/working/mixing/etc on?”.  Especially if I have been working with the same settings on any given channel or setup or if I am walking up to preexisting settings that I have not established.

Try (during sound checks of course or some non-disruptive point of rehearsals) backing off some of the EQ or disable the EQ momentarily to see if what is applied, is really making a beneficial impact (remember the least amount of EQ’ing is ideal because we could just be adding potential issues with each filter cut/boost).

Try disabling the compressor or gate (if applied) to remind yourself what the source sounded like without it.  Determine whether it is still functioning as intended.  You may find that setting  worked when you were mixing for that fast rocking song but not so well on the middle of the road stuff or power ballad.

The point is, try listening to it unprocessed somehow to see if what you have (or anyone else has) applied is really what sounds best.  You might discover you need to reconsider talking with the performer to see if their instrument or vocal technique can be improved, consider another mic’ing option or placement, or anything else that can improve the sound source before it gets into the console which will always lend better results in the final mix.

You might say…”dude, we don’t have time for that during our rehearsals.”  FIGHT FOR IT!  Not in a combative way but talk with your PM, WL, & musos how this can be included/improved.  The weekend schedule should already allocate time for this so see how to help get everyone on board with this.  It will only make the worship experience better for everyone.

I’m going to start, hopefully, a new weekly endeavor of posting a tip of the week for audio so keep checking back to see how I do and see if it can help you out for the next worship experience you may be serving for.

Now go turn some encoder knobs!

Blessings,

Doug