[GrahamFParticipant]

Thanks Mike,

Yes, I agree that feeding the groups to both FOH and the stream reduces independence. The problem is that the GLD-80 doesn’t g e enough resources for everything we want to do. I must admit that I had not considered the possibility of latency issues of the two signal paths.

Thanks,

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Mike,

Yes, the stream goes into a stereo aux output. We use the GLD Editor on a Windows laptop. That gives the stream engineer control over everything. We mix individual service leader and recorded music channels directly into the stream. The band now goes via three groups – drums & bass, instruments and vocals. The groups are routed to both Main LR and the stream stereo aux. The stream engineer can balance the groups against each other. If an input is too low in the group, he can top it up from the input directly to the stream stereo aux, but that is an undesirable complication.

[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Mike,

I was thinking the same, or try to stretch to an SQ-6 for FOH.

The reason for my question is that there may be more than one possible solution to their problem – e.g. use Dante to feed all the input channels into a PC running a DAW such as Pro Tools with Waves plug-ins and send that to the stream. That would give more power to produce a really professional sound. However, I have never used such a set-up myself, so I don’t know how easy it would be to operate. The other disadvantage is that you have to train the sound engineers with a completely new skill set.

We are using a GLD-80 to run both FOH and a live stream quite successfully. Our problems with this are:

1. It is operationally complex to have different things playing in FOH and the stream – e.g. before the service we put recorded sound with a PowerPoint slide show of notices on the stream, but the church leaders would prefer live music in the church.

2. Last Sunday, our service leader went up to the microphone with 10 seconds left on the timer. Instinctively, I unmuted him and everyone waiting on the stream heard him asking the congregation to sit down, because we were going live in 10 seconds!

3. The limitation in the number of groups. Sharing groups across FOH and the stream means that they can’t have independent mixes, unless you top up the stream with individual channels.

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

May I ask what problems you are aiming to solve with the SQ5?

[GrahamFParticipant]

Thanks Steffen,

Yes, I agree it’s reassuring to have an easy way to mute or reduce the effects. I have found it is quite easy to get confused with the send/return FX approach, so it is helpful to have that safety net. Some of our church engineers operate the system only once per month, so we need to make it as safe as we can for them.

[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Mike,

The reason for wanting a separate reverb on the stream is that it sounds nice with a longer hall reverb. However, that longer reverb does not work in the church, because it crashes into the building’s natural reverberation. However, I concede that it might be over-engineering.

A few weeks ago, I tried leaving the stream reverb on, while the service leader was speaking. It took me only a very short time to realise that it was a bad idea!

As you suggested, I have created a DCA for all the effects channels and I will probably make it a mute group. Aside from being useful in this particular situation, it provides a useful “get out of jail card”, if the effects go wrong and the sound engineer just wants to silence all of them quickly.

Thanks again for your advice.

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Show design attached. Unfortunately, I have just discovered that you can’t send from a group to an effect, which means I have to insert some reverb into the stream mix. This is far from ideal, as I don’t want reverb on backing tracks or when the service leader is speaking. Therefore, it will need to be turned off and on, or removed completely.

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[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Steffen,

Thanks very much for asking. We have combined a few output mixes in less critical areas off the church, so we have managed to free up capacity for the third group.

In case you are interested, the design is shown in the attached PDF.

Thanks,

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Steffen,

No worries, thanks for clarifying.

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Thanks Steffen,

The primary purpose of the groups is to apply compression across sets of similar inputs. The idea is that this should help us to keep the vocals above the instruments, without having to ride the faders. I am also hoping that it will glue those sets of inputs together in the mix.

We use DCAs mainly for muting, but your suggestion of using them for controlling volumes of many inputs is also interesting.

I checked the GLD-80 Screen Reference Guide, but I could not find DCA spills. A Google search found a few requests for this feature to be added to the GLD-80, so I’m wondering whether it is implemented on the GLD-80? I have found references to it on other Allen & Heath digital mixing systems.

Thanks,
Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Brian,

Thanks for the suggestion. I should have mentioned that our LR output goes to a Behringer DCX2496 UltraDrive Loudspeaker Management System, which seems to be similar to the Driverack w60. It is connected to two Electro-Voice (EV) CPS 4.5 500 watt per channel 4 channel amplifiers.

The amplifiers drive two subwoofers (I am assuming they don’t have in-built amps, but I don’t know) and two pairs of main speakers. One pair is some way in front of the stage and the other pair is halfway to the back. The front fill speakers recessed into the front of the stage fill the gap for the rows at the very front, which have the main speakers behind them. It is far from ideal, but we are limited by the cross shape of the traditional church building.

Unfortunately, the loudspeaker management system has only three stereo outputs, when we really need it to have four. Controlling the front fills separately doesn’t work very well, but again fixing the problem costs money that is not available at the moment.

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks very much for your helpful suggestions.

I have replied separately to Steffen and answered some of your questions there. I am working exactly along the lines you suggest with effects allocated to each group. This will enable me to configure them independently to suit the channels in each group.

I would love to have ME-1s, but we can’t afford them at the moment. Some performers use iPads to control their own foldback.

Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Hi Steffen,

My apologies for taking so long to reply to your question. The editor is telling me that all the buses, mixes and FXs are used up with the configuration below.

I am allocating separate reverb to each group. Taking the example of vocals, I send each vocal channel to the vocal reverb and return it from the reverb to the vocal group. Each group goes to both LR and the stream.

We have a Main LR bus, stereo aux bus for the live stream, stereo matrix for a fill-in LR pair inset into the stage, 5 x mono in-ear mono aux buses, 2 x mono aux foldback buses (some performers and the church service leaders are not comfortable with in-ear monitors) and two other church zones with mono speakers. By combining the two zones, we may have just enough buses left for 3 x stereo groups.

We plan to run 5x send/return stereo FX channels: reverb for each group (bass and drums, other instruments, and vocals), delay for vocals, and separate reverb for the live stream (it is needed, because the church has a lot of its own building reverb, so group reverbs need to be tailored conservatively to work in church). That leaves just 2 x mono effects available. We will probably insert them as Dynamic EQ or multi-band compressors in vocal channels – if they remain spare.

If we decide we need to split the zones in two, to allow independent control, then I will have to sacrifice a group. In that scenario, maybe a stereo compressor would be an alternative. Obviously, it lacks the volume control of a group, so I am hoping I do not need to do it.

I suggested buying ME-1s to free up the in-ear auxes, but the cost of five of those is too much for us at the moment.

[GrahamFParticipant]

Thanks Mike,

I reduced the sensitivity of the transmitter, because it was blasting the GLD-80 input. Even with the gain and slider right down, it was still feeding back loudly through FOH. I also had problems with distortion, which seemed to be due to clipping in the preamp. I was using some trim to avoid preamp clipping, but maybe that was a mistake? I am still getting some background hiss (much less than before), so I will try increasing the transmitter sensitivity.

Due to COVID-19, I can’t get close enough to the transmitter to look at the meter, while the service leader is speaking. However, I can ask my wife to stand in for her, while I read the meter. That should be close enough.

Thanks again for your helpful advice,
Graham

[GrahamFParticipant]

Sorry for the delay in replying. I was on sound this evening, so I was able to check the wireless transmitter. It is a Sennheiser EW 100 G2 Sk100. One of the microphones we use with these transmitters is a ME 2-II omni-directional clip-on microphone. I set the transmitter’s sensitivity to -20dB, because the preamp was clipping. The GLD-80 has gain set to 5dB and trim to 3dB. We are still getting hiss on that channel. The keyboard player was asked to play some quiet background music during prayers, which was enough to open the noise gate. I may adjust the transmitter sensitivity to -10dB and drop the gain and trim to see if that reduces the hiss.

I agree that the All Souls videos seem to have had quite a lot of post-processing. The second one is definitely a CD recording with video as well. Some churches, such as Bethel, seem to have honed them settings to such a level that they can live stream sound at almost the same quality as a recording. They even sell a sound template that can make your band sound like Bethel’s! You have to buy a MacBook, DAW and plug-ins first. Their sound is rather over-produced for my taste, so I would not take that direction myself.

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