Here we are — a little over a year since Covid-19 swooped in and radically changed our world. We’re not quite back to normal, but we definitely can see the light at the end of the tunnel. National, state and local governments are cautiously lifting restrictions, and various businesses are doing likewise. There are several vaccines available, and the CDC has stated that those who are fully immunized may return to business as usual, sans face mask. Some churches continue to maintain some restrictions out of an abundance of caution, and others have essentially eliminated all restrictions. Bottom line — changes have begun, and they continue apace.
Crossing the Stream
Through this season, we’ve all made adjustments. Chief among them is live streaming. Prior to Covid, many churches were already live streaming or at least looking into the possibility. Once the pandemic hit, nearly all churches — with rare exceptions — began live streaming. Some took the easiest possible path of simply sending the output of the FOH mixer to the video rig and calling it good. Others got a bit more sophisticated and created a discrete streaming mix on auxiliary sends. The most sophisticated among us took a separate feed of the raw signals from the platform and crafted a completely independent mix to accompany the video of our live stream. I like to think that some did so on my advice (see “Sound Sanctuary: Audio for Online Streaming,” in the April 2020 issue).
There are other reasons for acquiring a new console, and we’ll get into those shortly, but for many churches, streaming is the primary reason why we answer “yes” when asked “Is it time for a new console?” It would appear that live streaming will be “the new normal,” even for the smallest and least technically sophisticated churches. Today, it’s become an expectation, and even as churches gently urge parishioners to come back and attend in person once it’s fully safe to do so, plenty of folks will still at least want the option to take in the service from the comfort of their living room, or enjoy the benefit of being able to “attend services” at one’s home church via streaming when they are away from home for business or during the upcoming vacation season.
If live streaming is indeed the rationale behind the consideration of a new console, there are a few considerations. Among them: it needs to offer enough channels to present the mix to the online audience. Either it must offer at least as many channels as the main FOH mixer in the sanctuary, or the other possibility is to create stems via auxiliaries so as to present a simplified (and less channel-intensive) version of the mix for the online mixer to deal with.
The Volunteer Issue
Sharing aux or stem feeds can be very appealing, especially if your church’s audio labor pool is already spread thin and you can barely keep human beings in front of mixers for your services, you may need to ask for some additional volunteer help — help that may have zero training or experience. It’s at least a little more reassuring to be able to put such a volunteer in front of a simple mix and spell out its simplicity … “This fader is drums, this fader is guitars, this fader is the pastor,” etc.
This not only absolves you from the necessity for trained and experienced mixers, but it also means you can get by with a smaller and less sophisticated console. It wouldn’t need tons of aux buses, since monitoring will be handled either via a dedicated desk or by the musicians and vocalists themselves with “more-me” solutions. Also, that simplified stem mix can even bake effects into the cake, eliminating worries over volunteers dealing with reverb and/or delay sends and returns.
The alternative to the simplified volunteer-friendly stem mix is a complete mix of all raw elements from the platform, just like the front of house mix. This will require a console with at least as many inputs as front of house, albeit with less concern over buses for monitoring. We’ll want a mixer that can be quickly and easily navigated, both for quick, efficient mixing under normal circumstances, but also to facilitate quickly putting out a fire, such as a malfunctioning wireless receiver dumping a bunch of nasty noise into our mix, or when pastors engage in a very private conversation with a parishioner — in this instance, having forgotten to mute their headset microphone. DCAs (or VCAs) will be very desirable, or at least the capacity to mute auxiliary masters. Muting groups would be a nice feature as well. Of course, buses for effects are virtually a must.
At this point I might say, in a cavalier fashion, that it will be simple child’s play to just use the console’s onboard effects, with dynamics and high-quality, fully parametric EQ per channel and numerous reverb, delay, and modulation processors available. But the fact is that more than a few churches — for budgetary reasons — will pull that old analog mixer out of the storage closet, dust it off, and designate it as the way the online stream will be mixed. I would also respectfully submit, however, that moderately sophisticated digital mixers are now available at budget-conscious prices, and once we start thinking about the considerable complexity of setting up an older console with additional outboard gear and all the heartburn that comes with that, parting with a couple of thousand bucks for a digital mixer is a lot more appealing.
The Time Has Come
One potential reason for the consideration of a new console is that perhaps it was already in the works before the Covid season, and now that we’re emerging from our pandemic-enforced downtime, it’s time to pull the trigger and proceed. It’s possible that the budget picture has changed somewhat from the pre-Covid days, but budget is still one of the key considerations. Luckily, we’re blessed with the fact that technology continues to improve even as prices come down, and there’s plenty of competition between manufacturers at virtually every price point.
Another major consideration is channel count. Almost every single time a new console is acquired, the channel count will go up, since in most cases, services will continue to become more complex and more tech-intensive. My suggestion in this case is to dream up a realistic but hypothetical service with as many audio sources as you can imagine, total the number of necessary inputs, and then multiply by 1.5 to 2 in order to determine potential future needs. Nobody ever says, “Gee, I wish we had fewer inputs.”
You will almost certainly choose a digital console, which facilitates onboard DSP and simplified network audio routing in your space. It also provides snapshot recall and sophisticated muting schemes — both helpful if you have untrained volunteers mixing. Setting up musician-controlled monitoring is certainly easier with digital mixers, and removing monitor mixing from the tech crew’s plate makes things even easier for untrained volunteers.
As we (hopefully) reach the end of the Covid-19 era, there are at least a couple of reasons to look into a new console, either to follow through on a temporarily shelved plan, or to increase the quality of the live stream. Careful research and planning will yield the best results in either case.
John McJunkin is the chief engineer and staff producer in the studio at Grand Canyon University.
