Check with your broadcast team to find out what is the audio bitrate they are using for encoding. Those cymbals remind me of my mixes when our audio encoding was set to the default 128kbps. Try 256kbps or higher, that should improve the highs instantaneously.
Michael, I would love to know your view on how tech people in churches never get ministered to. What I mean by that is - I was a FOH guy for 13 years at a church. In that 13 years, no one ever checked on me spiritually. I was to almost all of them, invisible. We never get to really hear and internalize the message because we are busy bringing it to everyone else. I tried one time - unsuccessfully, to create a Bible Study for tech people. I think we need to figure out a way to minister to tech people, and find a way to worship together. Churches today can't exist with tech people, but it is my fear that most are dry bones and are not being feed. Would love to know your thoughts on this, maybe you could be the one chosen to get the Word out - that our tech people in churches need to be spiritually sound not just creating good sound!! Thank you for all you do for us, and for all the effort you put in to explain complex things to us. Love your heart and the way you are using this tool to get the message out.
I've been doing volunteer church audio and pro secular audio for 25 years. I am so thrilled to hear you talk about learning to accept feedback. It's an area of weakness in myself in both contexts. Your mix sounds good to me.
Hi Mike, WAY better broadcast mix than I usually hear, and I listen to a lot of church broadcasts. I think it's not fair to offer an opinion when using a live mix direct to broadcast, if you were in a booth it would come out totally different. But in saying that, it's pretty good. I have regularly mixed 30+ on stage in church, so I think you have nailed it, without getting down to granular comments. I analyzed the UA-cam video and the Audio is encoded at a bitrate of 129, so it's way to compressed to give a good opinion. The cymbals and HI's a swooshing all over the place which is the compression.. Great job, would like to hear booth mix from you..
129kbit AAC encoding is totally fine. It's not adding compression in the audio sense. It's almost completely transparent to the whole pipeline. Personally I can't hear any artifacts between that bitrate and the original raw audio. I generally encode at 160kbit anyway just to safe. The hihats "swooshing" as you call it is in the original material.
Great job - imho - on the mix sounding great without room or ambience input. I've been in worship and tech leadership in different settings for 25+ years, and while I agree that the vocals / words / lyrics are absolutely the most important thing... I don't believe that we (as mixers) should leave most church volunteer voices way out front & "naked". That in itself can be the distraction to the congregation & congregational singing that we try so hard to avoid. Also - thanks for being willing to even talk about taking criticism / input from others - communication & prayerful introspection is so so so important. Thanks again for talking about this!
I listen to a LOT of church broadcast mixes, and I'm really having trouble finding things I don't like about this. I think the hardest thing to do that you've done well is nail the level of the background vocals, both through studio monitors and laptop speakers. The bass is full, the midrange instruments are all well-balanced, and the effects make it feel not-sterile. The only tiny suggestion I could make is that I'd like a touch more snare. Granted, doing much more of that could jack with your master bus processing and make things start pumping, but there was room for the toms to be a little bigger, so perhaps there was a touch more room for the snare to come up/cut through. P.S. I think you're an awesome human.
Voices are a bit low. Just a bit. I am also a voluntary at Church, down here in Brazil. And I always try having all voices over the instruments, for the sake of clarity, for being able to clearly understand all that is said and sung. Church are not musical concerts, the content of what is presented to the faithful is far more important than the "show" as per say.
I don't have a degree of any kind regarding audio. To my amateur ears, this sounds pretty good. Sure, I feel like it sounds a bit muddy and not as crisp as I'd like, especially the guitars, but because I don't really know what I'm talking about, I can't give any explanation to why it does. Usually, this is the worst kind of feedback. Critique without any reasoning behind it is pretty much useless and everyone should ignore such feedback for the most part. I try to not think about unargued critique too much as the correlation between it and incompetence on the matter is usually quite strong. People who know what they're talking about AND also explain to me, why and how they critique something on the other hand, for those people I'm grateful because they help me improve, in whatever way it may be in life.
When it comes to YT comments, I appreciate constructive criticism because it helps me improve. Then you have some that arent useful and are just attacks on character. Those get blocked. I always look at myself as a student looking for good teachers. I share what I've learned along the way to keep the cycle going.
Sounds great. The primary goal of the stream is to bring the viewer into the space and allow them to ministered to. Your mix accomplished that. As far as feedback, the first thing I take in feedback is the sender. Is this person a industry expert? Is this person an audience member? Is this person a client? Is this person a musician? After I determine who the sender is; I'm able to understand what angle they are coming from. An industry expert might be speaking from a place of experience. A musician might be concerned with their own audio. Once I know what angle they are coming from, I look at what aspect of my job they are addressing. Is it technical? Is it equipment? Is is skill? I then look to see if I myself can address the issue or is it outside of my control and I need to seek the assistance of others. #1 rule when digesting feedback is to not get emotional.
The only thing I thought of was that I was trying to strain to hear the keys. But then I realized I wasn't sure what sound he was using so it could be I was trying to hear something different than what he was playing. On His Mercy is More I did hear them a time or two. This is all personal preference, though, I suppose. Definitely wasn't anything bad. I mean, the mix sounded solid to me. I personally sometimes struggle with allowing the vocals to sit out front like they probably should (only mixing for live here; we don't stream). I think you had them sitting just right.
Broadcast mix is a completely different animal. You never know what device they will be listening on. My advice would be bring those vocals to the forefront and blend in room mics to what you already have.
Receiving feedback, I think part of receiving feedback is writing it down, critically thinking about processing the feedback, and always learning and researching on your own time. Often your getting immediate feedback to improve something on the fly, no time to research. In that case, it’s important to try it and see if you like it if it’s a mixing suggestion. What I’ve found is usually the customer is always right. What I mean by that is they wouldn’t be giving me the feedback if there wasn’t something wrong. As many times as I’ve thought I was right about something, I was actually wrong. I’ve had to swallow my pride SO much as an audio engineer. Even to this day I make really foolish mistakes. It’s always important to consider feedback from others openly.
No room mics? I think that's all you're missing. The mix sounded fine to me, I know how hard it can be to get a broadcast mix sounding live and relatable, but you did a fine job.
Come on guys…give this nice mix some dignity. At least listen through some good headphones. Great livestream mix! Excellent… my only critique would be the bitrate increase…not your fault. Superb material here as well. I’m learning so much already and I’m so excited about finding your channel just today. Love it😊 Thank you. Thank you Thank you 👍
I feel like board mixes are really difficult to judge without the feel of the room. I feel like your balance sounds good, you can hear each instrument clearly and the toms sounds great! However, in general I feel like the mix is missing some lows and highs, it's missing the punch and the sparkle, probably because you have subs on an aux and it's being pushed harder in the house, which is honestly pretty normal, I do the same thing. Also in a live environment highs tend to run away or be too present at higher volumes, part of why we use a curve that slowly drops the highs off, but in a broadcast mix, they are kinda missing. Top end to the vocals and the cymbals things like that, but I'm sure live in the room, this sounded great as the mix itself sounds very well balanced! For me, I try to ask for feedback regularly, but I'm selective on who I ask. I ask people who I trust their ears, who know music and have an ear for these things. I also like to record on my phone at FOH my mix. Yes this comes with it's own set of issues, but I can listen back later, for an overall did it sound how I thought it did. looking for the balance, taking into consideration the room. I've actually been contemplating buying an external mic for my phone for this purpose. I think this is a great idea and seeking feedback is the best way to grow!
Setting aside bit rate - which I think is UA-cam's fault or maybe the fault of your audio player - to me the instruments minus the drums sound a bit loud. However, I am listening on cellphone speakers. Props to you for doing this.
A bit too much high mid, highs on my phone speakers 🔊 🔊The room definitely sounds like it needs lots more room treatment. Instead of more cowbell, MORE SOUND CURTAIN!! 😆 When tuning a 3way system. Such as biamp mains with subs. I took your paid workshop, but the shop only consisted with full range mains. What's the procedure and mic placement when tuning a biamp main??
The mix is solid you have a good balance of everything. The only thing I think I wanted was more detail from the drum shells. I find the energy from that makes a difference for how I feel about the overall mix. If anybody wants I’m happy to link to my mixes for review I’d love for someone to regularly nit pick me. It’s the one thing I don’t have in my weekly mixing at church.
Yo Bro! I play at the Bentonville campus! As a guitar player… that electric lead sounds way too dry and “70’s guitar lead” sounding for praise and worship. I know that’s not on you though :)
Following instructions :) In the first mix example, lead vocal does not sit in front of bgv enough - or the rest of the mix perhaps. Male vocal is a bit muddy and gets buried, and the harmony parts almost overwhelm it. Overall balance is very good, drums sound great even on youtube. Lead vocal for female vox on second clip is excellent contrast to first - lead is in front, clear, and bg vox is audible but does not compete. How easy this is of course depends on the singer and their tone, but sounds like you did great to me. A way to work on this myself is to be better at asking up-front for the feedback. Often ppl have thoughts and opinions but do not voice them - for some of same reasons you mentioned in your video. Normalize asking for input... Cheers!
Ugh, critiques are the WORST. That's probably why virtually no church teams do them. :) As other have shared, the first thing that jumps out at me is the lack of high end clarity, which may have nothing to do with the mix but rather the post mixdown compression in the video stream. That said, I've heard a LOT of very soft live streams of worship teams so it's something we need to work on. I think the vocals, especially without the high frequency clarity, are a bit lost in the mix. Just a dB or two on the lead vocals would help the congregation follow along better. Thanks Michael for leading this critique and for all of the resources you've shared.
Hey Michael, Vocals are very clear and the message of the songs are coming through. Love the drum mix. I noticed just two things. 1. I'm not sure if its the reverb or the room mics that are kind of "clouding" the mix. And 2., this is my opinion, the sustain guitar sounded too loud for my taste. i would have brought the keyboard a touch up and pushed guitar a notch back. In terms of how to react to feedback from others, I would love to listen more to other views this year. I think this is a bad approach, but I'd usually filter the person before listening to his/her view. Maybe i should go with the listen to all first, then filter the information after. :) I wish we could have a platform where we can share our mix and get feedback from peers. Maybe there's one already. If there is, please post.
Enjoy the mix overall, especially the drums. IMO, the bass is a bit hot. I'm a bass player, and I love bass, but I felt it was a bit overpowering in this mix. I'd also like to hear the keys more, especially in the second clip. I'm a lot better about receiving criticism than I ever used to be, but it's definitely something I could improve on.
Wisdom of crowds right? This is a top notch mix as far as I'm concerned, but if you’re looking for minor critiques… Biggest issue which may having nothing to do with you: as others have mentioned, this recording seems to employ a fair amount of lossy data compression, so it's not a clear as it could be. (I think this might also explain the cymbal "hiss" that was also previously mentioned) And I too could use a little more keys, but that might just be personal preference.
One big issue with mixing , is trying to create something that doesn't exist. Our job and tools .... our role is to enhance and establish coherence. If the band you are mixing doesn't have the dynamics , tone, arrangements you will be forever self critical on something you don't control. If one was to look at the history of modern contemporary performance , group ensembles( choirs , orchestra , operas , big bands etc. ) . . . the composer , conductor , venue architects , where the ones responsible for the "sound" of the music performance. The musicians role was to reproduce as instructed by composer and conductor. The architect constructed the venues for the style of performance. These days , the sound engineer has tools that allow them to go beyond these boundaries. 1. Our PA are used to enable venues to accommodate performances the architect never intended. 2. Our consoles with endless inputs\dsp allow us to have a granular control over instruments that not even composers/conductors have ever had. The technology we have at our disposal has created an augmented perception that actual doesn't exist. If you want to be self critical , take a mic and record the performance form FOH , then with the same mic record the performance in rehearsal ( with no pa , just basic sound reinforcement ie. vocal mics , acc guitar , keys.) Compare what is created , with what your reinforcement produces. We must remember our job as live sound engineers is not to re create the performance. Ours is 1. Sound re enforcement ie. amplification of soft elements to a larger audience 2. Coherence ie. Natural balance of levels/volume. Critiquing board mixes is basically useless . . . the room acoustics , presence of audience , mood in the venue etc. , don't translate. (Just to add , part of this exercise bleeds over to the digital encoding that happens in order for us to give feedback from the youtube video.) We need to go back to the fundamentals of getting the band to sound right acoustically. Thank You for all the amazing videos. Learning a lot.
I was able to hear all the instruments and voices clearly =a good mix. I would possibly reduce a bit of bass guitar. As the tech director at our congregation I try to encourage feedback, most people will reply if I ask very specific questions about levels or camera shots or distractions. I’ve found people receive feedback differently so I approach them differently when I have feedback.
Soooo hard to give feedback when it’s just an LR send without any room mics! But here goes. 1. Love the drum sounds, especially how the toms are sitting in the mix (however I agree with one of the other posts about bitrate. Maybe it’s just getting too digitized at some point but the high end seems garbled. So I’d love to hear it in house ) 2. First clip I’d want the lead vocal to pop out a little bit more. Second clip the girl sits on top a little better. 3. Gonna steal a line from Ted Lasso and say I need to be curious and not judgmental. If I’m curious why someone has criticism or feedback it helps me understand why they think a certain way and then that helps me apply that to what I am doing better.
Soooo hard to give feedback when it’s just an LR send without any room mics! But here goes. 1. Love the drum sounds, especially how the toms are sitting in the mix (however I agree with one of the other posts about bitrate. Maybe it’s just getting too digitized at some point but the high end seems garbled. So I’d love to hear it in house ) 2. First clip I’d want the lead vocal to pop out a little bit more. Second clip the girl sits on top a little better. 3. Gonna steal a line from Ted Lasso and say I need to be curious and not judgmental. If I’m curious why someone has criticism or feedback it helps me understand why they think a certain way and then that helps me apply that to what I am doing better.
I'd be stepping into deep water trying to improve your mix in that venue. From here on out it's personal taste. It ain't a perfect world.😅 I mixed for Jimmy Swaggart front of house campaigns way back when, doesn't get more difficult😝
So I listened just on my MBP speakers as the average stream person would do. I know those speakers do not fully represent the sound spectrum available and what was captured. I find it excessively hard to mix the room and mix for the stream on the same console, as I feel that the stream needs different treatments that can't be handled by just a bus output with some extra compression and eq. My caveat: I do not claim to have the greatest of ears....That being said...if I have 2 acoustic guitars on stage, I will always bury one in the mix...there's just not the acoustic fidelity available or sonic space for both to come out in the mix. Respectfully, in both clips I didn't hear the keys rig at all. The electric guitar was absent until it had a prominent lick. Coming from a vocalist standpoint, I didn't hear the other vocal parts hardly at all once you got past the lead voice. I have been often criticized myself for getting vocals too far forward in the mix. And this one is hard for me, but the drums sounded dull. I find it very diffcult to make the drums sound vibrant and alive on the stream mix..what works for the room doesn't quite translate to a stream and that's something I'm working on this year, and consulting with others who mix streams only. These were my humble evalutations, and probably reflect to some degree my preferences of what I prefer to hear in a mix; and these are not necessarily any defaults/ detractions to your mix or your skill.
It feels very balanced. The only thing that really stuck out to me is the clarity of the band seems a little muffled. I blame behringer! 😂 I think it’s headed in the right direction and it could be a result of room sound. Me telling a system tech that 😂 something scovill mentioned and I’m always asking myself now, is it source, mix, or room problem. And then how do I best tell the story. I pick three elements to push, vocals being one of them then I decided what will help get the message across with what’s left. Keys or electric? Then the snare cuz I love me some phat snare! 😂 maybe someday I’ll work up the courage to post my board mix for strengths and weaknesses. Thank you for being open.
Hey! Nice one for putting yourself out there and being real about feeling unsure of yourself at times, the music industry does not often allow for that which is a shame cause we all experience it! One thing I really liked - the vocals are lush and blended beautifully, great reverb to make it all sit nice and feel lively. One thing to improve on - the bass feels a bit muddy and overcompressed maybe? A bit more dynamics and clarity there would be great. However, as others have said, this sounds to me like a pretty low bit rate recording? Lots of artifacts going on so it's hard to tell exactly what is what. Would love to hear the mix straight from the board!
All audio people hate feedback, that's why we have feedback destroyers and parametric EQs. On a more serious note, anyone who works in any kind of production work has a tendency to be a control freak and we have to be. We are responsible for the outcome of our work and when things go wrong we have nowhere to hide or anyone else to blame so we bring our A game every time. Or at least we think we do. So this is why we respond to negative feedback about our work typically negatively. We feel that we are giving our all, and for the most part we are. So when somebody comes along and implies that our best isn't good enough we get butt hurt. Then when that person leaves we casually look down and unmute the missing channel. In this business, you have to have thick skin because everybody is a critic. Just sayin.
Someone mentioned bit rate and that might be the reason for what I hear. It sounds slightly muddy. The low end on the drums sounds loose. On the upper end, the vocals seem to lack presence. They sound tucked back in the mix. What I do from gig to gig is do both a multitrack and a left right recording. I will sit behind my computer for hours and look at what I did live and then train myself to realize other ways I could have solved the same problems. I often find I make some strange choices live that when re mixing the multitrack I don’t make the same choices. There are many variables that I can’t reproduce like the room and the ambient noise of the room. I mainly concentrate on a headphone mix, which is what I do live specifically for what my channel processing is. The groups and main mix are processed mainly by ear.
For my 63 year old ears, I want more clarity from the acoustic guitar and keys. Vocal mix was nice as were bass and drums. I was the main sound engineer at a medium size church with contemporary worship. I learned to listen past the attacks to find the actual issue. Too loud many times was bad EQ or unlike genre. You are never too old to learn and it's never all about me!
1. Great mix, solid foundations agree room mics would help at points, I like how the bass and kick relate to one another. 2. Potentially consider a little more keys in Promises, appreciate this is totally personal rather then anything wrong. we’ve had great success going stereo and very wide so that you can get more presence but still leaving room for vocals. 3. Feedback at times particularly when not constructive can be tough to receive but remembering everyone is for the same goal and reminding myself that I am a child of God first and his opinion of me matters most, and this just gives me some stuff to work on but not get me down.
Sounds great! I was listening through my iPhone 8 speakers. I love how well everything sounds for a board mix. The levels are extremely well balanced; and the room mics really make everything blend well. The drums are consistent and well processed. Obviously this doesn’t sound like a studio mix, but when you try to mix a live show like a studio mix all the problems usually come out. So I think you got it sounding as good as you could.
I think your mix sounds great tonally! I preferred Board Mix 1 because you brought instruments forward more and makes it feel “less empty.” Being in a room, vocals and drums make things feel nice and I can understand why it appears to be that on your broadcast mix. Only thing that I would say is that I wish the snare stuck out more (or more slow-attack compression), but given the vibe that your band gives (it’s good, by the way!) it seems to fit. I also wish that things were panned out to the sides a bit more. That’s about it! I, too, want to be better about how I receive notes and feedback about my work. I have been working on trying to separate myself from my work because I also take things personally. I’d love to share my mix and hear feedback. Let me find a link.
Way to go! Its very cool that you did this and I support your efforts! I think we micro-manage way too much in audio. No one cares! Everyone has different high freq hearing loss, vastly different listening preferences based on their history of listening to old radios and earbuds. Also i am sure this sounded as perfect as can be in the room. I go for clarity and separation of some things and blend of others.... but again... no one cares. Go to some random churches and listen... you will feel great about you mix.😃
There’s A LOT going on but I can very clearly here the singer. That is great. The mix is balanced and despite the multitudes of sources it’s easy to hear and understand the worship leader. I like the mix. Tell Dorch hi for me.
The mix is overall balanced very well. Especially impressed with the toms and snare. Reverbs sound very nice and clean as well. The only thing I think it could use is a bit more overheads, its difficult to tell what the cymbals are doing. I realize some of that is due to data compression. Very nice work Michael. I appreciate you pointing this out. I think that difficulty taking feedback and criticism is an issue that plagues our industry and I struggle with it regularly. I will try to think about my response to feedback more carefully.
-Its a good discussion as the bar has been raised high by some great mixers. I've mixed live on DigiCo/S6l/LV1, on Meyer and others in nice rooms and sometimes not so nice rooms. (Point is, I've got the tools to make a nice live mix so if its bad, its on me) I die a thousand deaths listening to the LR mix on studio monitors afterwards if I expect them to sound anything like a split live mix in a studio. Splitting source mics to a studio where I mix for stream live on a nice console in a nice room: I'm a rock star! IMHO they are very different animals. -This weekend I captured all the tracks for a virtual sound check of a great Journey cover band. Did Virtual soundcheck after band rehearsal and was able to tweak channels to prep for the event. The live event went fantastic. Listening to Virtual Sound Check a couple days later at home, the vocals were (as often happens) a disaster of cymbals, guitar amp bleed, and stage bleed making it totally useless outside of the live situation if I'm looking for "that sounds good!" -Currently I mix at a church on an S6L we send directly to UA-cam via Matrix with "some processing". I hate the UA-cam mix because I know what it should sound like. But I can't mix live for UA-cam even if I could figure out how to do it. We are just building the infrastructure for a separate stream mix that will change everything. -On another aspect of your topic, it can be challenging getting micro managed especially by "non audio" and "not professional" event management/leadership. As I'm mixing channel levels up and down to "produce" and cause the event to breathe a bit, I'll sometimes have someone hovering tell me "I can't hear the electric guitar right now, can you turn them up?" At this point in my life I always say "sure" and move the fader a bit. If its a recurring mixing event like church, schedule a meeting and just have a conversation about mix philosophy and tell them I'll work on my art. - enough rambling. My 2 cents.
Hi Michael, First of I would like to clarevie that I have NO exerence with mixing, I can only tell you what I hear. I love that you ask for someone elses opinion, that is the first step in the right direction ! First the Positiv: I love the way the vocals, sound, they are clean and up front. The Drums sound powerful and clear as day. Same goes for the guitar sound ! Apsolutly amazing ! What I think you could work on: I would love to hear more details from the cymbels and in generell more HF details. Maybe some overhead mic's for the drums would work or/and EQ the vocals a bit into that direction. I hope you can work with this. Keep up the great work. Becaus of you I learnd a lot about PA-Systems and how to set them up. I'm still lerneing of couse but I#m getting somewhere. PS: Please don't be to harsh on my english, it isn't my first language. Also something I need to work on this year.
This mix is quite good for a live mix... Very good in fact... Maybe the tone of the drums qnd the balance with the overheads could be better. But then again, a live mix... It's so good... The reverbs are clean too. A tad too obvious for my taste but again... a live mix Good work sir. I'm more of a studio mixing engineer, though I've been a reasonable lot of live mixing recently. This is not easy to achieve in a live mix especially because you're mixing with the room in mind. Knowing you, your PA must have been well tuned😊
Hey Michael! Listening on studio monitors here. Firstly, the tonal balance is excellent. Nothing jumped out at me for being harsh, boxy, boomy, etc., and every instrument had its space in the mix. The biggest problem I'm hearing is time smearing; transients sound mushy. I'm guessing you needed to re-encode the livestream to get it into your YT video, which would certainly account for that; just a limitation you had to deal with. But that aside, I had trouble hearing the snare. When one song transitioned to the next, and the rhythm changed, it took me a few bars to "re-calibrate" to the new rhythm. I think the re-encoded video played into that, but I also believe there was a mix component. One of my magic bullets for pop/rock drums is to put an 1176 comp on the drum bus, with a fairly quick attack/release (like, 7 or 8 on the dial). Hit it hard enough that you're mostly seeing 3-5 dB of gain reduction. Then push the drum bus up in the mix a bit. But again, this may just be due to the time smearing already mentioned. The vocals sounded excellent, and the singers balanced perfectly on their harmonies. Good, smooth dynamics there.
Great mix. The reverb on vocals, snare, and toms sounds clean and tasteful. Everything sounds good tonally. My one critique is the kick... I would turn it up a little more, and I also prefer less click from the high-mids, but that's just personal preference. Anyways, great job mixing! I would very much enjoy attending a church with this level of musicians and sound quality.
Hey Michael! I really like the drums sound and the solid instrument mix overall... I think your mix is in line with most good church mixes. My suggestion to all church mixes is to mix more like good rock shows with a little less vocal prominence, but that is often not the goal, so take it with a grain of salt... overall, I really admire your work and the courage to put yourself out there in a very easily criticized way. As for me, the older I get the more I realize there are younger folks coning up that are coming up with new ideas and techniques... I have been working on being more open to ideas and less critical, and being able to receive criticism. We could all do well to do that. Thank you for the beautiful reminder! Blessings!
I'm a House of Worship guy as well. Got my start there over 15 years of playing music and now I'm the tech lead at my church. I also work for a local production company mixing shows outside the church as well. I felt the mix was pretty solid. The feel was a little more spacious to my ears. Maybe there is a lot of verb on the vocal chains and the drums, but that was my only concern. Vocals are pronounced in a balanced way. I felt like some low end was lacking, but that's to be expected when my reference headphones can't produce the same quantity of low end as the subs in your room. Good work, man!
I am always struggling with the live vs live stream battle. We do not have the volunteers to have a separate mix for our stream. We seem to be a bunch of Un organised people (I guess volunteers are busy people too 😂). This is often our most complained about component of Sunday sound. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s is very hard to accurately critique somebody’s mix without being in the room! But I love to tell my volunteers to pick something they didn’t like (they always don’t like something hey I always don’t like something about my mix) and work on that whether it be researching ways to do it better or even work around it. Which is why I love your channel you have helped me tremendously overcome some hurdles I have come across. This is why I love your honesty which mistakes because it gives a reason why to do something not just a how to do something. Many blessings Chris
1st of all great mix! 2nd of all great band! Sounds like you get to mix some solid players. Everyone is very consistent dynamically. I know that has to make a mix little easier and a lot more fun to do! I can tell this sounds great in the room. On the livesteam it does get squished a little too much. I don't know if thats the masterbus limiting or the stream converter but if its the masterbus limiter maybe back it off a little. It is live music after all so less control but more dynamics would be a more exciting and enjoyable listen. Other wise more kick and snare! Maybe a little less low mids on the vocal bus if possible with out it getting harsh on the loud hi notes (Mainly the male singer in these examples). Might help clean up that area of the mix a bit. You have a lot of energy collected around there (In a good way, well, maybe a little intense but it feels good!) I just went and compared this to one of my board feeds and the vocal low mid was just a little tiny bit less so perhaps it works in the room? That's just something I'm always trying to figure out. I feel like I hear a lot of live mixers leave a lot of low mid in live vocals. Records don't sound like that though they are always very clean down there. I think it's because it's easier for vocals to sound consistently good no matter how low or high they sing if you leave the low mids in. It can get very harsh easily if you take it out. Then you've to got get into dynamic eq or multiband to get it right. You can get it with regular eq but it takes a lot of work and is different for every vocalist... Anyway what are your thoughts on this?
Hey Michael, thanks for sharing with us. I'm listening through headphones to an Apple TV version of UA-cam. My gut reaction was that the first song was muddy or dense at the sides and that this wasn't present in the second song. I'm fine with helpful and constructive feedback from artists and audience but cringe if there are compliments. After 20+ years of mixing and playing guitar in a church, I've stepped out to do audio with a couple of local cover bands so that I can bring back some freshness and excitement to my ministry.
Thanks for sharing. This is really cool to see and also to read through what everyone else is thinking. The vocal processing is all really pleasant and clear. The main thing that stands out as a negative is the keys are mostly missing. If it were me, I would also probably bring down the electric slightly and boost the acoustic(s) (depending on if I can get a decent acoustic sound from a DI). Also, a slight bump to the bgvs.
I think the mix sounds great for what it is, and I wouldn't change anything. It's also very interesting to read how everyone hears this and how they attempt to explain it. I, like many others also really like the drum sound, especially considering there are no overheads. There is so many other things happening in around that frequency range, it works really well not having them. The top end sounds degraded, I think someone mentioned transient smearing, but I'm assuming that's a codec/encoding thing going on which has nothing to do with the sound of your mix. If I had to pick anything, the female lead vocal in the second clip has some sibilance going on to my ears, but only minor. All in all really great for a L&R mix. For me in the field, getting feedback is very much welcomed, and I make a point to check in with musicians on a regular basis to make sure they are good. My biggest problem is having people not listen to me, or not believe what I'm saying, but that's something else.
1 I like how you have managed the bass between the kick and bass, well done, that's hard to get right. 2 Low mid is muddy, feels like issues coming from Tom drums and swimming reverb. May be masked in the room but if that could be less out of control clarity would be easier. 3 Hit is bang on the head about getting feedback and not taking it personally, I will continue to try and remove myself from the feedback more and more.
sounds great Michael! very easy to engage with for the listener which is the most important thing for this kind of mix... at least in my monitoring environement, i think so more warmth and low mids would be helpful... perhaps something with pads, a fatter EG sound... bass is in a great spot and feels like the leading (almost the only) contributor to the low mids/warmth space... getting the snare a little fatter with a bit more sustain would be nice as well. The toms coming in feel like they are louder than the snare which is usually the inverse of what ive aimed for in this current CCM sound... one thing i have found helpful is to have a band/vox/FX/speech bus structure so that i can add or sub a dB or two from things that, in the house mix, would be needed for the room but might lead to vox or FX feeling too far forward in a playback environment like this... band/vox/FX would be down approx 10dB from speech bus so that I can level match two two entities going to broadcast... great exercise! thanks for inviting us in!
It sounds real good. When listening from an iphone’s speaker the guitar sounds too high. After putting my headphones on, I said you killed it. Good job Michael
First let me state that I think your mix is fine. Your approach is always sound. The thing is, it’s totally subjective. Everyone hears things differently. Everyone has different listening habits and experiences. That being said, there is no right or wrong way to mix so the feedback you get may or may not be useful for the specific presentation. For instance, in my experience I have found that when I get feedback (both verbal and non-verbal) that the presentation is too loud, it usually centers on a specific frequency or range that they are sensitive to. Or when and musician says that they can’t hear themselves, it’s likely because they asked for “a little bit of everything” in their mix (especially a wedge mix). All that being said, the best way to receive feedback is to take it in its entirety, don’t take it personally and use it as you will.
Overall, it sounds like you have a good balance mix. 1. love the your use of effects to try create depth in your mix. 2. Even though the mix balance sounds good, I'm not sure but it sounds like you are hitting the limiter a bit hard or the threshold is set to low which makes your mix sound a little distorted or squash. 3. Sometimes especially how I operate in the church market I normally run into sound systems what are in need of surgery but, persons want you to slap a Band-Aid on the sound because of funds but they expect it to sound brand new. I need to exercise more patients in that area. Thanks Michael for the content. Also, what board you was using for these mixes?
First of all, it's AWESOME to know that you're a believer! Second, thanks for the encouragement on being vulnerable. As for your mixes, they are both very good. The only things that I noticed on both of them is that the OHs were pretty low. It was hard to hear the cymbals. The only other thing was that the eGtr on the second one was a touch too loud for my taste, but not by much. I haven't looked at anyone else's comments yet, BTW. Thanks!
First, I love wha your doing here. Your spot on, we need more sharing/vulnerability! This has been my mantra for many years now! love to see you using this platform to spread this type of positive encouragement! As for the mix, it sounds like a really good base. Without the context of the room what I am about say may be totally invalid. Drums sound clean and tight on the attack, nice tone. I may add a little sustain with time based effects to glue the individual notes together (this may happen in the room already). Guitars and Piano, maybe squish them a little more together to bring more energy to the front of the mix. You could add a little time based effects to them as well and maybe a short delay on your acoustics to act as filler in between the notes. overall really great board mix without hearing the room and going strait to broadcast. 2 Thumbs up
Love that you shared these thoughts! I agreed with what @germanboza said about bit rate. Feel free to give me a call if you want me to look at settings with the live stream side of things, but other than the audio encoding degradation I thought it was great! I especially liked those toms.
I think a lot of the SSSSSSS is coming from the double-compressing of the video. It was compressed into a streaming format and then re-compressed by UA-cam. It leaves a lot of artifacts in the essy highs. But who knows?
Totally agree. I always try and leave as much as I can but sometimes bass players get really excited during the show and start picking or plucking really hard and you get a bunch of super agressive clang clang clags in the mix that can be quite distracting! And they usually don't do it during soundcheck/rehearsal so a lot of times the roll off is a precautionary thing. Lately I try and leave as much high end as possible but an amount removed that is still affective against the clangs!
Thank you so much for sharing. I have been doing sound for church in general for 20 or so years. At my current church for the last year and a half I have been mixing on an xair using a computer as my sound desk with only two outs, one monitor and the live stream. We just install an x32. Working on mastering all of it but especially the stream mix. It ain’t pretty but it will get better.
1. the elements merge very well in the mix and the audio almost drips emotion 2. i think the drums (exspecially the cymbals) hiss a little bit with the reverb... but that could be youtubes mp3 as well 3. I try not to feel stupid and ask the artists or project managers to speak honest with me regarding their feelings before and feedback afterwards. it makes me understand better what they want from me. also i want to ask more stupid questions when i dont know stuff - some audio engineers i saw on job try to hide their knowledge in order to hide to others what they dont know.
Hey man, overall you are doing a great job! (I'm not surprised at all by that). That said, my one thing that could improve is more in the "nit picky" camp than the "oh that's wrong" camp. - Love the vocal mix, love that all the vocalists can be heard but you still know who is LEADING the song. - The bass feels a bit rumbly and woofy, steps on some of the other elements a bit. Listening through ATM50x. P.S. Great drums
Check with your broadcast team to find out what is the audio bitrate they are using for encoding. Those cymbals remind me of my mixes when our audio encoding was set to the default 128kbps. Try 256kbps or higher, that should improve the highs instantaneously.
Is this possibly why to me the mix sounds a little muddy and not real bright. The presence seems low and vocals in the back.
If I’m not mistaken, that looks to be a Resi video player. Resi only allows for 64kbps or 96kbps, which is unfortunate.
Michael, I would love to know your view on how tech people in churches never get ministered to. What I mean by that is - I was a FOH guy for 13 years at a church. In that 13 years, no one ever checked on me spiritually. I was to almost all of them, invisible. We never get to really hear and internalize the message because we are busy bringing it to everyone else. I tried one time - unsuccessfully, to create a Bible Study for tech people. I think we need to figure out a way to minister to tech people, and find a way to worship together. Churches today can't exist with tech people, but it is my fear that most are dry bones and are not being feed. Would love to know your thoughts on this, maybe you could be the one chosen to get the Word out - that our tech people in churches need to be spiritually sound not just creating good sound!!
Thank you for all you do for us, and for all the effort you put in to explain complex things to us. Love your heart and the way you are using this tool to get the message out.
I've been doing volunteer church audio and pro secular audio for 25 years. I am so thrilled to hear you talk about learning to accept feedback. It's an area of weakness in myself in both contexts. Your mix sounds good to me.
Hi Mike, WAY better broadcast mix than I usually hear, and I listen to a lot of church broadcasts. I think it's not fair to offer an opinion when using a live mix direct to broadcast, if you were in a booth it would come out totally different. But in saying that, it's pretty good. I have regularly mixed 30+ on stage in church, so I think you have nailed it, without getting down to granular comments. I analyzed the UA-cam video and the Audio is encoded at a bitrate of 129, so it's way to compressed to give a good opinion. The cymbals and HI's a swooshing all over the place which is the compression..
Great job, would like to hear booth mix from you..
Curious, what tool do you use to analyze the bitrate of someone else's video?
129kbit AAC encoding is totally fine. It's not adding compression in the audio sense. It's almost completely transparent to the whole pipeline. Personally I can't hear any artifacts between that bitrate and the original raw audio. I generally encode at 160kbit anyway just to safe. The hihats "swooshing" as you call it is in the original material.
I use a downloader that checks bitrates called VideoProc Converter
Just copy the UA-cam link and it will analyze the bitrates of video and audio.
Great job - imho - on the mix sounding great without room or ambience input. I've been in worship and tech leadership in different settings for 25+ years, and while I agree that the vocals / words / lyrics are absolutely the most important thing... I don't believe that we (as mixers) should leave most church volunteer voices way out front & "naked". That in itself can be the distraction to the congregation & congregational singing that we try so hard to avoid.
Also - thanks for being willing to even talk about taking criticism / input from others - communication & prayerful introspection is so so so important. Thanks again for talking about this!
I listen to a LOT of church broadcast mixes, and I'm really having trouble finding things I don't like about this. I think the hardest thing to do that you've done well is nail the level of the background vocals, both through studio monitors and laptop speakers. The bass is full, the midrange instruments are all well-balanced, and the effects make it feel not-sterile.
The only tiny suggestion I could make is that I'd like a touch more snare. Granted, doing much more of that could jack with your master bus processing and make things start pumping, but there was room for the toms to be a little bigger, so perhaps there was a touch more room for the snare to come up/cut through.
P.S. I think you're an awesome human.
You're very kind, James! Thank you so much for the feedback. In retrospect, I too want more snare that I mixed for the house/stream.
Voices are a bit low. Just a bit.
I am also a voluntary at Church, down here in Brazil. And I always try having all voices over the instruments, for the sake of clarity, for being able to clearly understand all that is said and sung. Church are not musical concerts, the content of what is presented to the faithful is far more important than the "show" as per say.
Disagree. I feel this a subjective thing. To me they sound more than loud enough.
I don't have a degree of any kind regarding audio. To my amateur ears, this sounds pretty good. Sure, I feel like it sounds a bit muddy and not as crisp as I'd like, especially the guitars, but because I don't really know what I'm talking about, I can't give any explanation to why it does.
Usually, this is the worst kind of feedback. Critique without any reasoning behind it is pretty much useless and everyone should ignore such feedback for the most part. I try to not think about unargued critique too much as the correlation between it and incompetence on the matter is usually quite strong.
People who know what they're talking about AND also explain to me, why and how they critique something on the other hand, for those people I'm grateful because they help me improve, in whatever way it may be in life.
When it comes to YT comments, I appreciate constructive criticism because it helps me improve. Then you have some that arent useful and are just attacks on character. Those get blocked. I always look at myself as a student looking for good teachers. I share what I've learned along the way to keep the cycle going.
Sounds great. The primary goal of the stream is to bring the viewer into the space and allow them to ministered to. Your mix accomplished that.
As far as feedback, the first thing I take in feedback is the sender. Is this person a industry expert? Is this person an audience member? Is this person a client? Is this person a musician? After I determine who the sender is; I'm able to understand what angle they are coming from. An industry expert might be speaking from a place of experience. A musician might be concerned with their own audio. Once I know what angle they are coming from, I look at what aspect of my job they are addressing. Is it technical? Is it equipment? Is is skill? I then look to see if I myself can address the issue or is it outside of my control and I need to seek the assistance of others.
#1 rule when digesting feedback is to not get emotional.
The only thing I thought of was that I was trying to strain to hear the keys. But then I realized I wasn't sure what sound he was using so it could be I was trying to hear something different than what he was playing. On His Mercy is More I did hear them a time or two. This is all personal preference, though, I suppose. Definitely wasn't anything bad. I mean, the mix sounded solid to me. I personally sometimes struggle with allowing the vocals to sit out front like they probably should (only mixing for live here; we don't stream). I think you had them sitting just right.
Broadcast mix is a completely different animal. You never know what device they will be listening on. My advice would be bring those vocals to the forefront and blend in room mics to what you already have.
Receiving feedback, I think part of receiving feedback is writing it down, critically thinking about processing the feedback, and always learning and researching on your own time. Often your getting immediate feedback to improve something on the fly, no time to research. In that case, it’s important to try it and see if you like it if it’s a mixing suggestion. What I’ve found is usually the customer is always right. What I mean by that is they wouldn’t be giving me the feedback if there wasn’t something wrong. As many times as I’ve thought I was right about something, I was actually wrong. I’ve had to swallow my pride SO much as an audio engineer. Even to this day I make really foolish mistakes. It’s always important to consider feedback from others openly.
No room mics? I think that's all you're missing. The mix sounded fine to me, I know how hard it can be to get a broadcast mix sounding live and relatable, but you did a fine job.
The mix sounded really great and cohesive as a whole. Might bring up a little sizzle in the cymbals, but this toms sounded killer!
Come on guys…give this nice mix some dignity. At least listen through some good headphones. Great livestream mix! Excellent… my only critique would be the bitrate increase…not your fault. Superb material here as well. I’m learning so much already and I’m so excited about finding your channel just today.
Love it😊 Thank you. Thank you Thank you 👍
I feel like board mixes are really difficult to judge without the feel of the room. I feel like your balance sounds good, you can hear each instrument clearly and the toms sounds great! However, in general I feel like the mix is missing some lows and highs, it's missing the punch and the sparkle, probably because you have subs on an aux and it's being pushed harder in the house, which is honestly pretty normal, I do the same thing. Also in a live environment highs tend to run away or be too present at higher volumes, part of why we use a curve that slowly drops the highs off, but in a broadcast mix, they are kinda missing. Top end to the vocals and the cymbals things like that, but I'm sure live in the room, this sounded great as the mix itself sounds very well balanced!
For me, I try to ask for feedback regularly, but I'm selective on who I ask. I ask people who I trust their ears, who know music and have an ear for these things. I also like to record on my phone at FOH my mix. Yes this comes with it's own set of issues, but I can listen back later, for an overall did it sound how I thought it did. looking for the balance, taking into consideration the room. I've actually been contemplating buying an external mic for my phone for this purpose.
I think this is a great idea and seeking feedback is the best way to grow!
Setting aside bit rate - which I think is UA-cam's fault or maybe the fault of your audio player - to me the instruments minus the drums sound a bit loud. However, I am listening on cellphone speakers. Props to you for doing this.
A bit too much high mid, highs on my phone speakers 🔊 🔊The room definitely sounds like it needs lots more room treatment. Instead of more cowbell, MORE SOUND CURTAIN!! 😆
When tuning a 3way system. Such as biamp mains with subs. I took your paid workshop, but the shop only consisted with full range mains.
What's the procedure and mic placement when tuning a biamp main??
The mix is solid you have a good balance of everything. The only thing I think I wanted was more detail from the drum shells. I find the energy from that makes a difference for how I feel about the overall mix. If anybody wants I’m happy to link to my mixes for review I’d love for someone to regularly nit pick me. It’s the one thing I don’t have in my weekly mixing at church.
I find you extremely hones and love your content, very detail 👌 you and DAVE RAT are top engineers... explaining sound.👍😉👍
Yo Bro! I play at the Bentonville campus!
As a guitar player… that electric lead sounds way too dry and “70’s guitar lead” sounding for praise and worship.
I know that’s not on you though :)
Following instructions :)
In the first mix example, lead vocal does not sit in front of bgv enough - or the rest of the mix perhaps. Male vocal is a bit muddy and gets buried, and the harmony parts almost overwhelm it.
Overall balance is very good, drums sound great even on youtube. Lead vocal for female vox on second clip is excellent contrast to first - lead is in front, clear, and bg vox is audible but does not compete. How easy this is of course depends on the singer and their tone, but sounds like you did great to me.
A way to work on this myself is to be better at asking up-front for the feedback. Often ppl have thoughts and opinions but do not voice them - for some of same reasons you mentioned in your video. Normalize asking for input...
Cheers!
Ugh, critiques are the WORST. That's probably why virtually no church teams do them. :) As other have shared, the first thing that jumps out at me is the lack of high end clarity, which may have nothing to do with the mix but rather the post mixdown compression in the video stream. That said, I've heard a LOT of very soft live streams of worship teams so it's something we need to work on. I think the vocals, especially without the high frequency clarity, are a bit lost in the mix. Just a dB or two on the lead vocals would help the congregation follow along better. Thanks Michael for leading this critique and for all of the resources you've shared.
Hey Michael,
Vocals are very clear and the message of the songs are coming through. Love the drum mix.
I noticed just two things. 1. I'm not sure if its the reverb or the room mics that are kind of "clouding" the mix. And 2., this is my opinion, the sustain guitar sounded too loud for my taste. i would have brought the keyboard a touch up and pushed guitar a notch back.
In terms of how to react to feedback from others, I would love to listen more to other views this year. I think this is a bad approach, but I'd usually filter the person before listening to his/her view. Maybe i should go with the listen to all first, then filter the information after. :)
I wish we could have a platform where we can share our mix and get feedback from peers. Maybe there's one already. If there is, please post.
Enjoy the mix overall, especially the drums. IMO, the bass is a bit hot. I'm a bass player, and I love bass, but I felt it was a bit overpowering in this mix. I'd also like to hear the keys more, especially in the second clip.
I'm a lot better about receiving criticism than I ever used to be, but it's definitely something I could improve on.
Wisdom of crowds right? This is a top notch mix as far as I'm concerned, but if you’re looking for minor critiques… Biggest issue which may having nothing to do with you: as others have mentioned, this recording seems to employ a fair amount of lossy data compression, so it's not a clear as it could be. (I think this might also explain the cymbal "hiss" that was also previously mentioned) And I too could use a little more keys, but that might just be personal preference.
One big issue with mixing , is trying to create something that doesn't exist. Our job and tools .... our role is to enhance and establish coherence. If the band you are mixing doesn't have the dynamics , tone, arrangements you will be forever self critical on something you don't control.
If one was to look at the history of modern contemporary performance , group ensembles( choirs , orchestra , operas , big bands etc. ) . . . the composer , conductor , venue architects , where the ones responsible for the "sound" of the music performance. The musicians role was to reproduce as instructed by composer and conductor. The architect constructed the venues for the style of performance.
These days , the sound engineer has tools that allow them to go beyond these boundaries.
1. Our PA are used to enable venues to accommodate performances the architect never intended.
2. Our consoles with endless inputs\dsp allow us to have a granular control over instruments that not even composers/conductors have ever had.
The technology we have at our disposal has created an augmented perception that actual doesn't exist.
If you want to be self critical , take a mic and record the performance form FOH , then with the same mic record the performance in rehearsal ( with no pa , just basic sound reinforcement ie. vocal mics , acc guitar , keys.)
Compare what is created , with what your reinforcement produces.
We must remember our job as live sound engineers is not to re create the performance.
Ours is 1. Sound re enforcement ie. amplification of soft elements to a larger audience 2. Coherence ie. Natural balance of levels/volume.
Critiquing board mixes is basically useless . . . the room acoustics , presence of audience , mood in the venue etc. , don't translate.
(Just to add , part of this exercise bleeds over to the digital encoding that happens in order for us to give feedback from the youtube video.)
We need to go back to the fundamentals of getting the band to sound right acoustically.
Thank You for all the amazing videos. Learning a lot.
I was able to hear all the instruments and voices clearly =a good mix. I would possibly reduce a bit of bass guitar.
As the tech director at our congregation I try to encourage feedback, most people will reply if I ask very specific questions about levels or camera shots or distractions. I’ve found people receive feedback differently so I approach them differently when I have feedback.
Soooo hard to give feedback when it’s just an LR send without any room mics! But here goes.
1. Love the drum sounds, especially how the toms are sitting in the mix (however I agree with one of the other posts about bitrate. Maybe it’s just getting too digitized at some point but the high end seems garbled. So I’d love to hear it in house )
2. First clip I’d want the lead vocal to pop out a little bit more. Second clip the girl sits on top a little better.
3. Gonna steal a line from Ted Lasso and say I need to be curious and not judgmental. If I’m curious why someone has criticism or feedback it helps me understand why they think a certain way and then that helps me apply that to what I am doing better.
Soooo hard to give feedback when it’s just an LR send without any room mics! But here goes.
1. Love the drum sounds, especially how the toms are sitting in the mix (however I agree with one of the other posts about bitrate. Maybe it’s just getting too digitized at some point but the high end seems garbled. So I’d love to hear it in house )
2. First clip I’d want the lead vocal to pop out a little bit more. Second clip the girl sits on top a little better.
3. Gonna steal a line from Ted Lasso and say I need to be curious and not judgmental. If I’m curious why someone has criticism or feedback it helps me understand why they think a certain way and then that helps me apply that to what I am doing better.
I'd be stepping into deep water trying to improve your mix in that venue. From here on out it's personal taste. It ain't a perfect world.😅 I mixed for Jimmy Swaggart front of house campaigns way back when, doesn't get more difficult😝
So I listened just on my MBP speakers as the average stream person would do. I know those speakers do not fully represent the sound spectrum available and what was captured. I find it excessively hard to mix the room and mix for the stream on the same console, as I feel that the stream needs different treatments that can't be handled by just a bus output with some extra compression and eq. My caveat: I do not claim to have the greatest of ears....That being said...if I have 2 acoustic guitars on stage, I will always bury one in the mix...there's just not the acoustic fidelity available or sonic space for both to come out in the mix. Respectfully, in both clips I didn't hear the keys rig at all. The electric guitar was absent until it had a prominent lick. Coming from a vocalist standpoint, I didn't hear the other vocal parts hardly at all once you got past the lead voice. I have been often criticized myself for getting vocals too far forward in the mix. And this one is hard for me, but the drums sounded dull. I find it very diffcult to make the drums sound vibrant and alive on the stream mix..what works for the room doesn't quite translate to a stream and that's something I'm working on this year, and consulting with others who mix streams only. These were my humble evalutations, and probably reflect to some degree my preferences of what I prefer to hear in a mix; and these are not necessarily any defaults/ detractions to your mix or your skill.
It feels very balanced. The only thing that really stuck out to me is the clarity of the band seems a little muffled. I blame behringer! 😂 I think it’s headed in the right direction and it could be a result of room sound. Me telling a system tech that 😂 something scovill mentioned and I’m always asking myself now, is it source, mix, or room problem. And then how do I best tell the story. I pick three elements to push, vocals being one of them then I decided what will help get the message across with what’s left. Keys or electric? Then the snare cuz I love me some phat snare! 😂 maybe someday I’ll work up the courage to post my board mix for strengths and weaknesses. Thank you for being open.
Hey! Nice one for putting yourself out there and being real about feeling unsure of yourself at times, the music industry does not often allow for that which is a shame cause we all experience it!
One thing I really liked - the vocals are lush and blended beautifully, great reverb to make it all sit nice and feel lively.
One thing to improve on - the bass feels a bit muddy and overcompressed maybe? A bit more dynamics and clarity there would be great.
However, as others have said, this sounds to me like a pretty low bit rate recording? Lots of artifacts going on so it's hard to tell exactly what is what. Would love to hear the mix straight from the board!
Great mix overall. Sound is huge. Missing cymbals, he is driving the ride and it’s not coming through to support the sound of the band.
All audio people hate feedback, that's why we have feedback destroyers and parametric EQs.
On a more serious note, anyone who works in any kind of production work has a tendency to be a control freak and we have to be.
We are responsible for the outcome of our work and when things go wrong we have nowhere to hide or anyone else to blame so we bring our A game every time.
Or at least we think we do.
So this is why we respond to negative feedback about our work typically negatively.
We feel that we are giving our all, and for the most part we are.
So when somebody comes along and implies that our best isn't good enough we get butt hurt.
Then when that person leaves we casually look down and unmute the missing channel.
In this business, you have to have thick skin because everybody is a critic.
Just sayin.
nice work just a bit muddy when all the guitars are playing , lost the vocals a couple of times in mix one. US church's are definately different !
Someone mentioned bit rate and that might be the reason for what I hear. It sounds slightly muddy. The low end on the drums sounds loose. On the upper end, the vocals seem to lack presence. They sound tucked back in the mix. What I do from gig to gig is do both a multitrack and a left right recording. I will sit behind my computer for hours and look at what I did live and then train myself to realize other ways I could have solved the same problems. I often find I make some strange choices live that when re mixing the multitrack I don’t make the same choices. There are many variables that I can’t reproduce like the room and the ambient noise of the room. I mainly concentrate on a headphone mix, which is what I do live specifically for what my channel processing is. The groups and main mix are processed mainly by ear.
You're doing great. That's my feedback! :)
For my 63 year old ears, I want more clarity from the acoustic guitar and keys. Vocal mix was nice as were bass and drums.
I was the main sound engineer at a medium size church with contemporary worship. I learned to listen past the attacks to find the actual issue. Too loud many times was bad EQ or unlike genre. You are never too old to learn and it's never all about me!
I think that all livestreams suck, but this really doesn’t suck for one.
1. Great mix, solid foundations agree room mics would help at points, I like how the bass and kick relate to one another.
2. Potentially consider a little more keys in Promises, appreciate this is totally personal rather then anything wrong. we’ve had great success going stereo and very wide so that you can get more presence but still leaving room for vocals.
3. Feedback at times particularly when not constructive can be tough to receive but remembering everyone is for the same goal and reminding myself that I am a child of God first and his opinion of me matters most, and this just gives me some stuff to work on but not get me down.
Not audio related at all, but personally I loathe lyrics that fade.
It makes it so much more difficult to read.
Sounds great! I was listening through my iPhone 8 speakers. I love how well everything sounds for a board mix. The levels are extremely well balanced; and the room mics really make everything blend well. The drums are consistent and well processed. Obviously this doesn’t sound like a studio mix, but when you try to mix a live show like a studio mix all the problems usually come out. So I think you got it sounding as good as you could.
just a bit wet and compressed a tad to much
I think your mix sounds great tonally!
I preferred Board Mix 1 because you brought instruments forward more and makes it feel “less empty.” Being in a room, vocals and drums make things feel nice and I can understand why it appears to be that on your broadcast mix. Only thing that I would say is that I wish the snare stuck out more (or more slow-attack compression), but given the vibe that your band gives (it’s good, by the way!) it seems to fit. I also wish that things were panned out to the sides a bit more. That’s about it!
I, too, want to be better about how I receive notes and feedback about my work. I have been working on trying to separate myself from my work because I also take things personally.
I’d love to share my mix and hear feedback. Let me find a link.
Way to go! Its very cool that you did this and I support your efforts! I think we micro-manage way too much in audio. No one cares! Everyone has different high freq hearing loss, vastly different listening preferences based on their history of listening to old radios and earbuds. Also i am sure this sounded as perfect as can be in the room. I go for clarity and separation of some things and blend of others.... but again... no one cares. Go to some random churches and listen... you will feel great about you mix.😃
There’s A LOT going on but I can very clearly here the singer. That is great. The mix is balanced and despite the multitudes of sources it’s easy to hear and understand the worship leader. I like the mix.
Tell Dorch hi for me.
The mix is overall balanced very well. Especially impressed with the toms and snare. Reverbs sound very nice and clean as well. The only thing I think it could use is a bit more overheads, its difficult to tell what the cymbals are doing. I realize some of that is due to data compression. Very nice work Michael. I appreciate you pointing this out. I think that difficulty taking feedback and criticism is an issue that plagues our industry and I struggle with it regularly. I will try to think about my response to feedback more carefully.
-Its a good discussion as the bar has been raised high by some great mixers. I've mixed live on DigiCo/S6l/LV1, on Meyer and others in nice rooms and sometimes not so nice rooms. (Point is, I've got the tools to make a nice live mix so if its bad, its on me) I die a thousand deaths listening to the LR mix on studio monitors afterwards if I expect them to sound anything like a split live mix in a studio. Splitting source mics to a studio where I mix for stream live on a nice console in a nice room: I'm a rock star! IMHO they are very different animals.
-This weekend I captured all the tracks for a virtual sound check of a great Journey cover band. Did Virtual soundcheck after band rehearsal and was able to tweak channels to prep for the event. The live event went fantastic. Listening to Virtual Sound Check a couple days later at home, the vocals were (as often happens) a disaster of cymbals, guitar amp bleed, and stage bleed making it totally useless outside of the live situation if I'm looking for "that sounds good!"
-Currently I mix at a church on an S6L we send directly to UA-cam via Matrix with "some processing". I hate the UA-cam mix because I know what it should sound like. But I can't mix live for UA-cam even if I could figure out how to do it. We are just building the infrastructure for a separate stream mix that will change everything.
-On another aspect of your topic, it can be challenging getting micro managed especially by "non audio" and "not professional" event management/leadership. As I'm mixing channel levels up and down to "produce" and cause the event to breathe a bit, I'll sometimes have someone hovering tell me "I can't hear the electric guitar right now, can you turn them up?" At this point in my life I always say "sure" and move the fader a bit. If its a recurring mixing event like church, schedule a meeting and just have a conversation about mix philosophy and tell them I'll work on my art.
- enough rambling. My 2 cents.
Hi Michael,
First of I would like to clarevie that I have NO exerence with mixing, I can only tell you what I hear.
I love that you ask for someone elses opinion, that is the first step in the right direction !
First the Positiv:
I love the way the vocals, sound, they are clean and up front. The Drums sound powerful and clear as day. Same goes for the guitar sound ! Apsolutly amazing !
What I think you could work on:
I would love to hear more details from the cymbels and in generell more HF details. Maybe some overhead mic's for the drums would work or/and EQ the vocals a bit into that direction.
I hope you can work with this. Keep up the great work. Becaus of you I learnd a lot about PA-Systems and how to set them up. I'm still lerneing of couse but I#m getting somewhere.
PS: Please don't be to harsh on my english, it isn't my first language. Also something I need to work on this year.
This mix is quite good for a live mix... Very good in fact... Maybe the tone of the drums qnd the balance with the overheads could be better. But then again, a live mix... It's so good...
The reverbs are clean too. A tad too obvious for my taste but again... a live mix
Good work sir.
I'm more of a studio mixing engineer, though I've been a reasonable lot of live mixing recently. This is not easy to achieve in a live mix especially because you're mixing with the room in mind.
Knowing you, your PA must have been well tuned😊
Hey Michael! Listening on studio monitors here. Firstly, the tonal balance is excellent. Nothing jumped out at me for being harsh, boxy, boomy, etc., and every instrument had its space in the mix. The biggest problem I'm hearing is time smearing; transients sound mushy. I'm guessing you needed to re-encode the livestream to get it into your YT video, which would certainly account for that; just a limitation you had to deal with. But that aside, I had trouble hearing the snare. When one song transitioned to the next, and the rhythm changed, it took me a few bars to "re-calibrate" to the new rhythm. I think the re-encoded video played into that, but I also believe there was a mix component. One of my magic bullets for pop/rock drums is to put an 1176 comp on the drum bus, with a fairly quick attack/release (like, 7 or 8 on the dial). Hit it hard enough that you're mostly seeing 3-5 dB of gain reduction. Then push the drum bus up in the mix a bit. But again, this may just be due to the time smearing already mentioned.
The vocals sounded excellent, and the singers balanced perfectly on their harmonies. Good, smooth dynamics there.
Great mix. The reverb on vocals, snare, and toms sounds clean and tasteful. Everything sounds good tonally. My one critique is the kick... I would turn it up a little more, and I also prefer less click from the high-mids, but that's just personal preference. Anyways, great job mixing! I would very much enjoy attending a church with this level of musicians and sound quality.
Hey Michael! I really like the drums sound and the solid instrument mix overall... I think your mix is in line with most good church mixes. My suggestion to all church mixes is to mix more like good rock shows with a little less vocal prominence, but that is often not the goal, so take it with a grain of salt... overall, I really admire your work and the courage to put yourself out there in a very easily criticized way. As for me, the older I get the more I realize there are younger folks coning up that are coming up with new ideas and techniques... I have been working on being more open to ideas and less critical, and being able to receive criticism. We could all do well to do that. Thank you for the beautiful reminder! Blessings!
I'm a House of Worship guy as well. Got my start there over 15 years of playing music and now I'm the tech lead at my church. I also work for a local production company mixing shows outside the church as well. I felt the mix was pretty solid. The feel was a little more spacious to my ears. Maybe there is a lot of verb on the vocal chains and the drums, but that was my only concern. Vocals are pronounced in a balanced way. I felt like some low end was lacking, but that's to be expected when my reference headphones can't produce the same quantity of low end as the subs in your room. Good work, man!
I am always struggling with the live vs live stream battle. We do not have the volunteers to have a separate mix for our stream. We seem to be a bunch of Un organised people (I guess volunteers are busy people too 😂). This is often our most complained about component of Sunday sound.
I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s is very hard to accurately critique somebody’s mix without being in the room!
But I love to tell my volunteers to pick something they didn’t like (they always don’t like something hey I always don’t like something about my mix) and work on that whether it be researching ways to do it better or even work around it.
Which is why I love your channel you have helped me tremendously overcome some hurdles I have come across. This is why I love your honesty which mistakes because it gives a reason why to do something not just a how to do something.
Many blessings
Chris
1st of all great mix! 2nd of all great band! Sounds like you get to mix some solid players. Everyone is very consistent dynamically. I know that has to make a mix little easier and a lot more fun to do! I can tell this sounds great in the room. On the livesteam it does get squished a little too much. I don't know if thats the masterbus limiting or the stream converter but if its the masterbus limiter maybe back it off a little. It is live music after all so less control but more dynamics would be a more exciting and enjoyable listen. Other wise more kick and snare! Maybe a little less low mids on the vocal bus if possible with out it getting harsh on the loud hi notes (Mainly the male singer in these examples). Might help clean up that area of the mix a bit. You have a lot of energy collected around there (In a good way, well, maybe a little intense but it feels good!) I just went and compared this to one of my board feeds and the vocal low mid was just a little tiny bit less so perhaps it works in the room? That's just something I'm always trying to figure out.
I feel like I hear a lot of live mixers leave a lot of low mid in live vocals. Records don't sound like that though they are always very clean down there. I think it's because it's easier for vocals to sound consistently good no matter how low or high they sing if you leave the low mids in. It can get very harsh easily if you take it out. Then you've to got get into dynamic eq or multiband to get it right. You can get it with regular eq but it takes a lot of work and is different for every vocalist... Anyway what are your thoughts on this?
Hey Michael, thanks for sharing with us.
I'm listening through headphones to an Apple TV version of UA-cam. My gut reaction was that the first song was muddy or dense at the sides and that this wasn't present in the second song.
I'm fine with helpful and constructive feedback from artists and audience but cringe if there are compliments.
After 20+ years of mixing and playing guitar in a church, I've stepped out to do audio with a couple of local cover bands so that I can bring back some freshness and excitement to my ministry.
Thanks for sharing. This is really cool to see and also to read through what everyone else is thinking.
The vocal processing is all really pleasant and clear.
The main thing that stands out as a negative is the keys are mostly missing.
If it were me, I would also probably bring down the electric slightly and boost the acoustic(s) (depending on if I can get a decent acoustic sound from a DI). Also, a slight bump to the bgvs.
I think the mix sounds great for what it is, and I wouldn't change anything.
It's also very interesting to read how everyone hears this and how they attempt to explain it.
I, like many others also really like the drum sound, especially considering there are no overheads. There is so many other things happening in around that frequency range, it works really well not having them.
The top end sounds degraded, I think someone mentioned transient smearing, but I'm assuming that's a codec/encoding thing going on which has nothing to do with the sound of your mix.
If I had to pick anything, the female lead vocal in the second clip has some sibilance going on to my ears, but only minor.
All in all really great for a L&R mix.
For me in the field, getting feedback is very much welcomed, and I make a point to check in with musicians on a regular basis to make sure they are good.
My biggest problem is having people not listen to me, or not believe what I'm saying, but that's something else.
1 I like how you have managed the bass between the kick and bass, well done, that's hard to get right. 2 Low mid is muddy, feels like issues coming from Tom drums and swimming reverb. May be masked in the room but if that could be less out of control clarity would be easier. 3 Hit is bang on the head about getting feedback and not taking it personally, I will continue to try and remove myself from the feedback more and more.
sounds great Michael! very easy to engage with for the listener which is the most important thing for this kind of mix... at least in my monitoring environement, i think so more warmth and low mids would be helpful... perhaps something with pads, a fatter EG sound... bass is in a great spot and feels like the leading (almost the only) contributor to the low mids/warmth space... getting the snare a little fatter with a bit more sustain would be nice as well. The toms coming in feel like they are louder than the snare which is usually the inverse of what ive aimed for in this current CCM sound... one thing i have found helpful is to have a band/vox/FX/speech bus structure so that i can add or sub a dB or two from things that, in the house mix, would be needed for the room but might lead to vox or FX feeling too far forward in a playback environment like this... band/vox/FX would be down approx 10dB from speech bus so that I can level match two two entities going to broadcast... great exercise! thanks for inviting us in!
It sounds real good. When listening from an iphone’s speaker the guitar sounds too high. After putting my headphones on, I said you killed it. Good job Michael
First let me state that I think your mix is fine. Your approach is always sound. The thing is, it’s totally subjective. Everyone hears things differently. Everyone has different listening habits and experiences. That being said, there is no right or wrong way to mix so the feedback you get may or may not be useful for the specific presentation.
For instance, in my experience I have found that when I get feedback (both verbal and non-verbal) that the presentation is too loud, it usually centers on a specific frequency or range that they are sensitive to. Or when and musician says that they can’t hear themselves, it’s likely because they asked for “a little bit of everything” in their mix (especially a wedge mix).
All that being said, the best way to receive feedback is to take it in its entirety, don’t take it personally and use it as you will.
Overall, it sounds like you have a good balance mix.
1. love the your use of effects to try create depth in your mix.
2. Even though the mix balance sounds good, I'm not sure but it sounds like you are hitting the limiter a bit hard or the threshold is set to low which makes your mix sound a little distorted or squash.
3. Sometimes especially how I operate in the church market I normally run into sound systems what are in need of surgery but, persons want you to slap a Band-Aid on the sound because of funds but they expect it to sound brand new. I need to exercise more patients in that area.
Thanks Michael for the content. Also, what board you was using for these mixes?
First of all, it's AWESOME to know that you're a believer! Second, thanks for the encouragement on being vulnerable. As for your mixes, they are both very good. The only things that I noticed on both of them is that the OHs were pretty low. It was hard to hear the cymbals. The only other thing was that the eGtr on the second one was a touch too loud for my taste, but not by much. I haven't looked at anyone else's comments yet, BTW. Thanks!
Instant like. Much love brother. Working on that too
The message comes thru, loud and clear. Isn't that what worship music is all about? There's no such thing as a perfect live mix.
First, I love wha your doing here. Your spot on, we need more sharing/vulnerability! This has been my mantra for many years now! love to see you using this platform to spread this type of positive encouragement! As for the mix, it sounds like a really good base. Without the context of the room what I am about say may be totally invalid. Drums sound clean and tight on the attack, nice tone. I may add a little sustain with time based effects to glue the individual notes together (this may happen in the room already). Guitars and Piano, maybe squish them a little more together to bring more energy to the front of the mix. You could add a little time based effects to them as well and maybe a short delay on your acoustics to act as filler in between the notes. overall really great board mix without hearing the room and going strait to broadcast. 2 Thumbs up
Love that you shared these thoughts! I agreed with what @germanboza said about bit rate. Feel free to give me a call if you want me to look at settings with the live stream side of things, but other than the audio encoding degradation I thought it was great! I especially liked those toms.
Very good but the SSSSSS is cutting through my eardrums
I think a lot of the SSSSSSS is coming from the double-compressing of the video. It was compressed into a streaming format and then re-compressed by UA-cam. It leaves a lot of artifacts in the essy highs. But who knows?
Additional comment, the hardest part for me was foldback of stage mointors. He wanted them too loud and punchy bass.😮💨
Today problem solved with in ear😇
I hate in ear for performance interaction. Performance is the object of this whole deal isn't it. Sorry for the rant.🤕
Mixes come across well on iPhone, which is usually my target too.
Nice growl on the bass. Some churches roll off so much top end, the only thing left is a characterless thump.
Totally agree. I always try and leave as much as I can but sometimes bass players get really excited during the show and start picking or plucking really hard and you get a bunch of super agressive clang clang clags in the mix that can be quite distracting! And they usually don't do it during soundcheck/rehearsal so a lot of times the roll off is a precautionary thing. Lately I try and leave as much high end as possible but an amount removed that is still affective against the clangs!
Solid mix, Michael!
Thank you so much for sharing. I have been doing sound for church in general for 20 or so years. At my current church for the last year and a half I have been mixing on an xair using a computer as my sound desk with only two outs, one monitor and the live stream. We just install an x32. Working on mastering all of it but especially the stream mix. It ain’t pretty but it will get better.
Check out Drew Brashler's channel. He does a lot of very helpful X32 tutorials, many of them in a worship context.
@@soundman1402 thanks
1. the elements merge very well in the mix and the audio almost drips emotion
2. i think the drums (exspecially the cymbals) hiss a little bit with the reverb... but that could be youtubes mp3 as well
3. I try not to feel stupid and ask the artists or project managers to speak honest with me regarding their feelings before and feedback afterwards. it makes me understand better what they want from me. also i want to ask more stupid questions when i dont know stuff - some audio engineers i saw on job try to hide their knowledge in order to hide to others what they dont know.
Hey man, overall you are doing a great job! (I'm not surprised at all by that). That said, my one thing that could improve is more in the "nit picky" camp than the "oh that's wrong" camp.
- Love the vocal mix, love that all the vocalists can be heard but you still know who is LEADING the song.
- The bass feels a bit rumbly and woofy, steps on some of the other elements a bit.
Listening through ATM50x.
P.S. Great drums