Behind The Mixer

Learn Church Audio Artistry | Church Sound

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You hear talk of people transitioning into the wonderful world of digital mixing but you never hear of what happens after they make the transition.  Old habits must be broken, a new way of thinking about workflow has to occur, and digital mixing doesn’t mean you can finally perfect a vocalist’s mix…at least not for two weekends in a row.

The Three Traps of Transitioning from Analog to Digital Mixing

1. Don’t assume LAST week’s settings are perfect for THIS WEEK.

Digital mixers give you a massive amount of EQ control over each input.  While I’m grateful for graphical EQs, it’s easy to set them “perfectly” for each musician one weekend and think the next week those settings will still be “perfect.”

Week-to-week, a lot of factors change.  Guitarists use different guitars, different pedals, and different effects, all according to the song arrangement.  Oh yeah, and then what works for one arrangement doesn’t work for another.

I’m not against using the previous week’s EQ settings as a basis for the mix, but don’t assume it doesn’t have to change.

2. Before setting your gains and faders, check your group levels.

This one still gets me from time-to-time.  Coming from an analog work, it’s easy to look at your board and know exactly where your group volumes are set; these could be your groups, DCAs, “SUB’s”, whatever your board uses and calls them.

In the digital world, where some mixers work as a “surface” where the faders represent whatever channels you have selected, you might not see your group level fader settings unless you select the mixer’s surface to show them.  M7 users know what I mean with the DCA button.

3.  What you see is NOT always what you get.

In the analog work, you can look down at the mixer and see all of your settings (rack unit settings excluded.)  In the digital work, what you see in front of you is only a small representation of what’s actually set for a channel.  And in some cases, the digital screen before you might not be the same as the channel which you are focused.

For instance, on the M7CL, there is a bank of faders and controls on the mixer which are tied to the bank of channels displayed on the screen.  If you change the view to a different bank, say channels 1-8, but THINK you are on channels 10-16…you are changing the wrong channel.  I saw this happen to a tech when they thought they’d un-muted a microphone but were working with a different bank of channels.

Additionally, when a problem occurs during a service, such as with a microphone channel, using an analog board, you can scan over the whole board and spot an incorrect knob setting.  With digital mixers, you don’t get that ability.  Look to the channel you believe to be the problem and make sure you select that channel so your display settings are for that channel.

The Take Away

With great mixing power comes great mixing responsibility. Digital mixers give you a lot of control but to be used effectively, you must know how to use them…and never assume that what worked last week will work this week.

Question: What’s been the trap for you?

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  1. I agree that digital mixers give you a massive amount of EQ control over each input. My brother has an event firm and they are in need of a new mixer because the old one broke down. My sister suggested having digital mixers and shared this article with him. It says that in the digital work, what you see in front of you is only a small representation of what’s actually set for a channel.

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  3. Chris … if a church is considering a migration to a digital board and they don’t have anyone with hands-on experience, I’d like to recommend they find and chat with a local sound company that uses digital boards. Such companies can give great insight on the good and bad aspects of boards. They can also be great resources for an emergency call when a church can’t reach “tech support”.

    As an example, I had the pleasure of working with an incredible sound company last week. DJ & Randy had merged their two companies into one. They have used a number of digital boards and liked most of them. However, the extreme conditions provided by their customers have eliminated some vendors from their inventory. Granted, most churches will never run a board outside in 100+ degree heat but they have. And when the control surface deformed, it became a real time headache. Sure, that’s an extreme case but such knowledge and professional experience may prove to be “priceless”.

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    • Bryan, that’s excellent advice. I’d much rather a church talk with a production company that with a store. I’ve listened to the stuff that gets said at the gear stores and sometimes the salespeople are great and other times I shake my head.

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  4. I’ve been digital mixing for about 3 years now. Given a good digital mixer, I would hate to go back. To #1 I’d also add, unless you uploaded from a usb key, don’t assume that a file on the console will be the same as that which you left, especially if the room gets used during the week by multiple operators. Particularly in the early days, I found people would “borrow” my show file.

    Also, make sure you know what gets stored with a scene/show in the console, what can be “safed” or locked out, and what is a global setting that can be altered. I consider the previous weeks scene to be a template, but I recheck every channel’s settings. Watch those phantom power switches if you are doing offline scene editing. Know what, if any, cross-fade settings are applicable between scenes.

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    • Glen, speaking of phantom power, I came from a background in analog mixering with phantom power for all channels or phantom power for a group of channels. It took me a while to remember I had to select phantom power on the screen, at the channel level.

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      • That’s really interesting. What analog board were you running? Our current Soundcraft setup is only per channel phantom. I’m sure there are options for group but we don’t use them.

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        • John – most small format boards have global phantom, not individually switchable. I’ve come across a few that have switchable phantom for each group of 8 channels (can’t for the life of me remember names…), but nothing configurable

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