Worship Musician Church Video + Streaming Handbook | Page 13

ambient sound, they’re really loud, both in your
ears and out in the room. Closed-back phones
are best but it’s up to the sound operator to
learn by trial and error how well the sound
they provide translates to the real world. Many
churches have the Sony 7506 phones and
they work fine but they’re a little hyped in the
high and low end, which makes them great
for tracking music but they’re not the best
choice for an accurate monitor. However, many
of the playback devices are weak in the low
end and focused on the highs—an important
consideration. If your headphones are a little
bright, that actually helps you build a mix that
isn’t naturally hyper-bright-sounding—a good
characteristic for playback on small speakers.
During the actual stream, it’s impractical to
don’t know for sure whether they’ll experience array of listening systems. Virtually everything monitor the mix as it comes back from the
the stream on a $100,000 home hi-fi system or we used to consider has been rebirthed— stream because there is typically a several-
$10 earbuds. We don’t know if the listener is in it’s alive! Broadcast audio has always had a second latency (delay before you hear it).
a car, a closet, or a cavern. So, here’s the really certain component that had to account for a You can’t make changes or mute mics based
big question. How in the world can I create a wide range of listening experiences. However, on monitoring the live stream because you’ll
mix that sounds good everywhere it’s heard? now church sound operators need to consider miss every cue by several seconds. With that
Well, welcome to the increasingly perplexing something other than the FOH mix, too. said, it is crucial that you know what your
audio conundrum of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
mix is sounding like on the least common
BUILDING THE MIX FOR STREAMING
denominator.
The first stereo recordings were commercially The computer industry has always had to
released in 1958 and as we progressed through be aware of the user’s range of listening
the next few decades, stereo audio continued experiences. They’ve mastered the ability to
to become more and more sophisticated and create a video game that sound awesome on a
the art of recording reached a peak of mastery mono computer speaker and awesome on the
in the late ’70s and ’80s. However, there was a super-duper home hi-fi system. How can that
single two-sided shackle around the leg of the be possible? Keep reading…
audio industry: mono AM radio and television.
In an era where some of the iconic, all-time best MONITORING audio engineers were laboring over the most When setting up the audio feed for a steam, minute audio detail for the discerning listener, the most obvious and simplest choice for When we mixed music for AM radio but still
everything still had to sound great on the mono monitoring Close-backed wanted it to sound great on a large system,
AM car radio and coming from a two-inch low-fi headphones are the best because they take we’d set up a basic stereo mix and then send
mono television speaker. more of the ambient sound out of the equation. everything to a mono mix through a single small
is
headphones.
speaker made by a company called, Auratone.
My studio and recording background started in It’s ideal to make mix decisions in a separate These simple speakers were robust enough to
the ’70s and in the ’80 I was chief engineer at room that’s isolated from the music and handle the rigors of constant use, but they did
a 24-track analog studio in Seattle. So, I cut preaching, but that’s not always practical. a great job at simulating the AM radio and TV
my teeth on building mixes for multiple listening Open-backed headphones tend to be the experience.
environments. I recorded countless albums flattest responding and most accurate but they and produced a boatload of jingles (music for let too much of the outside world in, and if you Virtually all of your favorite classic rock and
advertising) that would be heard on the vast turn them up far enough to hear above the pop recordings were mix in multi-million dollar
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