Help with FX routing please

[MarkParticipant]

Hi,

I’ve been reading these forums for a number of months now and have learned a lot, but this is my first time posting a question…

We are using our SQ in church currently for pre-recording a band, multi-track out to Reaper, which has been going great, but I’m trying to work out how I want to set things up for when we eventually move to live streaming. I’m using the recording sessions as a way to test and refine my scenes and routing. I thought I had everything worked out for my latest set of options, but saw some unexpected behaviour (to me at least) during a test run last night using a multi-track from my laptop.

I’m attempting to route vocals to a group, drums (mainly cajon for now) to a second group, and the rest of the band to a third group. This allows additional processing if I need it. Those go through an aux so I can mix them and add more processing, and finally to a matrix which will be the stream output. I’m not sure at this stage if I need all these groups, but as we currently have them available I wanted to experiment with this arrangement. The vocals are also routed through an FX mix to add reverb, which is sent to both L/R and the stream aux. I’m choosing not to send the drums to Main L/R at all at the moment.
I’ve done a simple block diagram showing how I have the routing configured – at least I believe this is what I have! It’s the first time I’ve tried anything this complex.

I was listening to the vocals while testing this out, hoping to be able to separately control the amount of reverb applied to Main L/R vs. the streaming output. Listening on headphones I could hear the reverb on the vocals group, and the stream aux, even though I thought I had routed the FX only to the stream aux. I tried changing pre/post, the FX return fader level on the main layer and the aux, even muting the FX return, but I was still hearing reverb on the vocals group. I can’t work out whether I’ve got the routing wrong, or what I’m trying to do just won’t work and I should be using a separate FX processor for the stream output? Can anyone point out where I’m going wrong?

I’ve attached a zipped up showfile if anyone has the time to take a look.

Thanks!

Mark

PS. Sorry, that turned out to be a much longer post than I originally intended…

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[volounteerParticipant]

@mark

Sounds like overkill for streaming.
Might be right for your church; for our small church that is still overkill.

We just put a mix into the streaming pc for the video folks to use.
Only complaints we ever get is that parts of the audio are too weak; and we are working on that as we get that same complaint in church live at times.

Nobody ever said there was too much/little reverb or other fx.
Our A1 keeps trying to tweak things like that.
I told him he can hear it but nobody in our audience cares.
The ONE thing that people do want is to hear the talker clearly so he is intelligible at all times.
Maybe if we had kids with their own garage bands they might want that verb and fx stuff.

Some of the experts will be along soon to tell you what to do with your SQ technical problem.

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

Hi Mark,

Welcome! that’s a pretty great first post.

I had a quick look at the diagram and ran up the show in MixPad, couldn’t see anything obvious, though I may have been looking at the wrong scene.
Is it ’60) Livestream Ex’?

Regarding FX sends and returns, for what you describe (and looking at the routing in the show), I think you’d want the FX sends to be post and the FX return sends to streaming aux to be pre.
Hearing the FX return when muted is probably the strangest part of this though – to listen to the stream mix, are you PAFL’ing it in isolation?

Something else I noticed was that you have made use of some assigns (i.e. On/Off to mixes), but not for everything. It might be worth going through and unassigning any inputs/groups/auxes/LR from all the places they definitely don’t need to go. For example, if you are only using the matrix for the final stream output fed from the streaming aux mix, then you could unassign the LR from that matrix.

Cheers,
Keith.

[MarkParticipant]

Hi Keith,

Thanks!

Yes, sorry, I wasn’t clear on the scene, I knew I had forgotten something. It’s actually the loaded scene, but is 23) Rec Band 1 31/10.
It might make more sense then!
In that scene I think I’ve been a lot more selective with my assigns.

And, yes, I was PAFL’ing the StrVox group (as I called it on the scene), and that’s what I was finding odd, hearing reverb on that group which shouldn’t have been getting any of the reverb.

Thanks,

Mark

[MarkParticipant]

@volounteer

You may be right, it could be overkill, but in part I’m finding out what the possible options are and was inspired by the recent A&H broadcast interview to try something a little different.

Thanks,

Mark

[volounteerParticipant]

@mark

Good luck.

Some options are easier than others.
Some work better than others.
Testing them to see what’s what makes sense.

Your diagram may be insufficiently labelled, or have an extra connection, but it sure looks like you are putting the fx on the signal to the LR as well as the streaming.

More processing on streaming to small PC speakers, but not also to the live audience seems unwarranted to me.

If this is to have fun playing with the SQ options then go for it.
Else I still question if viewers will be able to appreciate the effort.

[MarkParticipant]

@volounteer

It is about having a bit more control over the processing going to the live stream compared to in the building, how much I’m not sure yet. So in part it is definitely trying out the art of the possible, and seeing what the desk can do too 🙂
I already add more compression on our recorded band when I edit them now, as the sound is so different on small speakers compared to in the church. The FX is a minor point really, but it was troubling me the way it was behaving. It should go to L/R, and to the stream, I would like to be able to separately decide how much goes to each, that was the idea.

[Mike CParticipant]

Maybe think about adding a room or two into the live stream mix.
Not too much just enough to get a feel.
On the spoken word parts maybe pull the room mic out of the streaming
mix.

Make sure they are not routed into the main LR mix

[volounteerParticipant]

@mark

We just do different paths separately for the livestream and audience in the building.

We use a mix which works for us. We had tried a matrix. Not sure why THEY decided to move to the mix instead.
Could be it was easier for us to adjust the level to the OBS PC that way.

I would say keep the paths separate no matter what fx verb compression or other processing you do to each of them; just dont let them interact by processing one path with some fx first then splitting it.

[MarkParticipant]

@mike C

Yes, those are on my list to get at some point. Just need to persuade others that we need it…

@volounteer

Agree on the separate processing, and it’s really useful getting some time to try these things out before we actually do start to do a stream for real 🙂

[Mike CParticipant]

Yes, those are on my list to get at some point. Just need to persuade others that we need it…

To give it a try you could use just about any extra mics you may have laying around.

[volounteerParticipant]

@mark

woweee!!
you get to try it before you go live.
what a luxury.

we were forced to go live day 1 and fumble our way through the entire learning curve.
to be fair, the video team was brand new and they did the fumbling.
to their credit they got it decent fairly quickly and then have been enhancing and upgrading since then.

If anything they now want to spend way too much money thinking they are competing with national network tv shows.
The reality is that we would be lucky to have a couple hundred folks streaming video & also the AM/FM radio listeners.
We have no good way to measure it but I suspect it is about equal between them.

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

@mark

Hopefully found it…
So in that Scene (23), you have a Reverb unit loaded in the 6th FX rack, and this is inserted into your ‘StrVox’ group.
The only way to adjust the level/balance of an inserted FX unit is with the wet/dry controls in the FX screen – once set that balance is going to be the same wherever you send that channel.
In this case then, you may have ‘baked in’ the reverb on that vocal group, meaning it would also exist in the Aux and Matrix mixes that the group feeds into.

As you already have a vocal reverb that is running as a Mix -> Return, you can already independently adjust the FX Return (#1) sends to main LR and the streaming group or aux.
But another idea to add extra space/ambience to just the stream mix would be to insert a much more subtle room or hall reverb directly on that streaming aux instead.
It would take some tweaking to get right, but the aim would be to send everything through this to mimic the mix of everything in your main speakers going into your room.
i.e. try approximating your room with an FX unit and insert this on just the stream mix.

Cheers,
Keith.

[MarkParticipant]

Yes, that was it. I just spotted it myself during our recording session today!
Somehow I had missed that one…

I’ll also try your suggestion of adding a little reverb as an insert to the stream mix and see how that goes.

Many thanks!

Mark

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