natural reverberation of the room. They hear only the signals you deliberately put into the broadcast mix.
This is why a post-fader copy of the FOH L / R bus can sound completely out of balance online. If the drummer is naturally loud in the room, the FOH engineer may have very little snare or overheads in the PA. Send that same balance to the stream and suddenly the drums sound weak. Meanwhile, the lead vocal that needs substantial reinforcement in the room may be extremely prominent in the L / R mix, so it becomes disproportionately loud online.
The FOH mix is compensating for the room. The broadcast mix must create the room from scratch.
Start With a Dedicated Broadcast Bus The first major improvement is to stop thinking of the livestream as another place to send your main mix. broadcast send follows FOH fader moves. That can be useful because when the FOH engineer mutes a speaking microphone, you probably want it muted online too. But it also means every FOH mix move affects the stream. A prefader send provides greater independence, but now someone needs to actively manage the broadcast mix.
There isn’ t one correct answer for every church. The important thing is understanding what is linked and what is independent.
Your Livestream Needs a Room Once the instrument balance improves, many livestreams still have another problem: they sound too dry.
That’ s because close microphones and direct inputs don’ t capture the experience of being in a worship space. You might have a vocal mic two inches from the singer, direct feeds from
acoustic guitars and keyboards, close mics on the drums, and modelers feeding electric guitars directly into the console. Technically, you have everything.
Except the room.
This is where audience or ambience microphones become extremely valuable.
A pair of microphones positioned to capture the congregation and the acoustic character of the room can transform a livestream. Suddenly the listener hears people singing. They hear applause and response. The music feels like it’ s happening in a real space instead of a collection of isolated inputs.
But ambience mics need to be mixed carefully. Turn them up too far and the broadcast becomes washy, distant and potentially out of phase. Leave them open at high levels during
Treat it as another mix destination.
On most modern digital consoles, that means creating a stereo bus or matrix specifically for broadcast. Ideally, you want enough independent control that the level relationships in the broadcast mix can be different from FOH.
How independent you can make it depends on the console. Some systems provide separate mix buses with independent sends. Larger systems may use a dedicated broadcast console sharing the same stage inputs. But you don’ t necessarily need another console to make a significant improvement.
Even a dedicated stereo bus on your existing desk gives you the ability to put more drums into the stream, change the balance of guitars and keys, and keep the lead vocals from dominating simply because that’ s what the room requires.
This is where pre-fader versus post-fader sends become important. A post-fader
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