For the past few months I have been the main person for front of house sound at my church. I am not a "Sound Engineer", didnt claim to be when I volunteered to help, but id like to think i have a good ear. I play bass in the worship group as well and there was one guy that ran the board that did a good job but he took on a new job and cant be there as often which is why I stepped up. The others not so much. It was always nothing was layered right, or thin, or just plain flat. Supposedly there was a guy that was a "sound engineer" and he made the mix that we are supposed to use. That mix is that we are supposed to us is the one that does not sound right / good.
We are using a Behringer Wing. I am continuously learning the ins and outs of the board, the set up and plugins. One thing I dont understand with how this mix we are supposed to be using is the EQ settings. I included some images. Everything is set WAY below the "0"dB line which in turn just to get nominal gain correct, the gain has to be turned WAY high. The mix on one of the guitars was a +35dB gain just to make it nominal and still had to push the fader to +2-3 just make it present in the mix. Acoustic had to be a +40 gain. Trim on alot of the inputs whether its a vocal mic or instrument is usually no more than +4db. Ive had to do alot of EQ work on this saved mix already but I have been doing the altering from the point that was previously set up. Normally I would think that you would want the EQ to start form the "0" line and you cut or boost from there. I was going to try and create my own base mix one of the rehearsal days and start everything form the 0 line and EQ from there to see how it goes. That previous sound engineer they had do this is no longer around and the guy that had him do it is no longer around. the lead Pastor has mentioned about getting new speakers install through out the worship center and under the platform. The current system is in place in the up towards the ceiling, so i would say maybe 30ft up. It doesnt sound bad, I have had many compliments on how the sound has been since I have made adjustments and the worship team likes it when Im on the board. But you cant "feel" the music in the platform with this system. The bass and kick is there with still some more room to grow but you dont have that physical feel in your feet because the speakers are in the air. I do not agree that it is the best use of church funds to put subs under the platform. Especially when people want to go up to the alter to pray or be prayed for. They dont want to have to speak over the kick drum or bass guitar in there face.
Basically I want to optimize what we currently have before he considers new equipment. Much better things the funds could go to. And I absolutely do not even want the notion to be considered to have one of these AudioLink programs put in place. The attached images are of a couple instrument inputs, vocal mics and the pastors headset mic before I really had messed around with them to much and is on a 60dB scale. Let me know what you think! Thanks for your time and look forward to the discussion!
Oy. Those EQ Pics are hurting my brain a bit.
Doing live sound is less about having a good ear and more about reproducing audio in a room and adapting to the room, with some balancing and mixing involved.
In a magical ideal world, you'd hire a professional sound engineer who knows what they're doing to set it up properly and not how the previous guy did it.
If it's gonna be you doing it, that's fine. You can probably get it close-enough to good, and probably can get it better than whatever that is in your pics. Also, I'd fix the mix before buying new speakers because the speakers are only going to sound as good as the mix. A good mix is free. New speakers are expensive.
If I was the one fixing things, this is what I'd do:
0 -
Ring out the room. Not sure if your PA has a feedback suppressor, a Graphic EQ, or if the Main Out of the Wing has a way to EQ/Suppress feedback. But basically, ring out the room to find the frequencies that feedback in that room. It's not about EQ to sound good. It's EQ to adjust for the room.
1 - Zero the board. Undo everything the previous engineer did. All the EQs and Compressors and other FX off, and all the gains and levels and faders down to 0.
2 - Go track by track, setting the gain for that instrument so it's peaking somewhere around -12dB.
3 - Go track by track soloed, bring the fader up until it's a reasonable volume by itself. Then listen to how the instrument sounds in the room. Load up an EQ for the channel.
- High pass the low frequencies below the lowest frequency that instrument plays.
- Listen for frequencies that are too boomy or present and pull them back a little bit. Don't need to be extreme cuts. Just enough to make the too-much frequencies equalized to the. You're listening for something that's booming in the room, or places where the harmonics stack weird and become too much compared to the rest of the frequencies.
- After only using REASONABLE amounts of negative EQ, then listen and see if the tone is "missing" too much of anything you want to boost. But you're doing live sound so boost gently, smoothly, and only where necessary. And remember, cutting with the EQ and pushing the fader a little more is often better than boosting an EQ band. (I caps-locked REASONABLE because whoever was before you did not understand what that meant.)
- For instruments that need it (bass, kick, snare, vocals) you can pull up a compressor and just let them kiss the compressor at their sweet spot. At most maybe 4:1. But 2:1 will do a lot live. Remember 3dB double the power. So 3dB of gain reduction is actually more than it seems. A little compression goes a long way. If you can hear the compression it's probably too much.
- If it needs it, a noise gate on the snare can be helpful. Again, be very judicious and conservative with its application.
4 - Bring all the faders down to zero and then begin to mix:
- Start with the vocals. Get them to the level you want them. They're the anchor volume. Everything else needs to fit around them.
- Then bring up the kick. Balance the kick to the vocal volumes. Ideally you shouldn't move this fader either.
*** if you start losing the vocals or kick in the mix, don't push them louder. Bring everything else down, or start over. ***
- Then do the rest of the kit.
- Then the rest of the instruments starting with the bass and going up the frequency range of instruments.
You should be able to get decent balanced mix with that alone.
You can also add a little bit of reverb to the vocals, guitars, snare, and non-kick drums if they need it. But use it extremely sparingly and use a shorter decay time. The room itself has its own reverb and adding too much will wash out the entire mix.
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The tricky bit about saving templates is, different instruments have different frequency response curves. A P Bass is mid-forward. A Jazz Bass with both pickups up is scooped. No template EQ setting is going to work for all basses in a the room. Same goes for the other instruments as well.
Similarly, different instruments and pedalboards have different outputs, (plus the musicians thinking they're clever and turning themselves louder mid-set), so you gain you saved might not be right for someone who brought an instrument with hotter output than the week prior, or turned up their gain or keyboard volume more this week than last.
I don't have specific Wing experience, but perhaps you can save templates for certain arrangements and recall them depending on which musicians show up, and which instruments they bring, and even then, you might have to adjust a bit each time.
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One more small comment about the crazy EQs in the board right now. The fact that they're all below 0dB, whatever the previous guy was trying to accomplish with that could have been solved by just lowering the gain or the fader. Decreasing every EQ band is just lowering the volume. And boosting every EQ band is just boosting the gain. That's the reason we have gains and faders. They could have just turned down the gain or the fader and used normal EQ curves off the 0dB line. I mean, walking into situations like this is one of the reasons I won't do live sound professionally anymore.
) job. 
