[ozdocParticipant]

@nottooloud
Sorry, my bad terminology. I meant route a aux mix to front of house outputs (patched directly or through a matrix) Not ideal but would work for that senior citizen setup if they were needing to use SQ4you.

As for the lock on Sq4you, had forgotten about that. Thanks.

[ozdocParticipant]

@brad
You could just route a prefade Aux mix to Main L/R and set up the senior citizens that way via SQ4YOU.
Or let them use mixpad and set their one mic and PC input on a custom layer. As long as they can find the custom layer, all good.

@nottooloud
If implemented, you would want some feature to lock out band members from accessing the L/R Main. There’s nothing worse than seeing your FOH faders magically move in front of you when another user is supposedly adjusting the online mix but accidentally are on the wrong mix (as happens frequently with Mixpad in our church!). If you are doing a walk around is there still the need for the overview / metering tablet at that time, or can you just use that?

[ozdocParticipant]

Duplicate the guitar channel on the SQ (same DI input going to two separate SQ channels).
While the gain control is the same for both (set and leave), use the digital trim to adjust one of the channels to achieve optimal input gain.
Now you’ve got individual EQ control and signal flow for each guitar without having to adjust anything mid show.
Just remember to mute the guitar channel that you are not using at the time!

[ozdocParticipant]

@willy
Select the particular monitor mix you want to by pressing a Mix key (blue keys down the Right far side). Channel faders are now representing your monitor mix.
Assign each channel to either pre fade (not affected by LR mix faders) or post fade (monitor channel will follow LR mix faders). Do this by holding the ‘Pre Fade’ key (far left side above ‘assign’) then use the select button on each channel to assign it to either Pre or Post fade. Select button light on means it is setup as Pre fade, light off is post fade (when pressing and holding the Pre Fade button). If assigning post fade as in the OP’s situation, start with the channel faders at unity and adjust from there. Most monitor mixes though are usually set as prefade.

Make sure the mix is routed out of the SQ appropriately in the ‘I/O’ screen.

Setting a particular monitor mix to mono or stereo is done in the ‘Setup’ screen, using ‘Mixer config’ and ‘Mix Stereo’ tabs.

[ozdocParticipant]

Send your LR mix to Matrices, one for front of house and one for monitors. Each Matrix can then have different mixbus processing applied as required
Alternatively set up your monitor mix layer to be post fade and set all faders at unity. Should achieve the same result.

[ozdocParticipant]

Hi Ray. I had a listen to your last three weeks of recordings. Bearing in mind that we here would listen to this with a different set of ears and expectations to the average person listening, (who probably don’t care that much), so take the comments with that in mind. But striving for excellence is something to be encouraged.

The kick and bass is nice and solid, at least through my headphones. Recording for online is difficult as you are never sure what device the listener is using.

Does the Roland drum kit get patched into your sound desk as individual drum inputs, or as a Left-Right drum STEM mix? Either way some adjustment could be made to the hi-hat and crash whether at the desk or on the Roland kit itself. The Hi Hat in particular seemed a bit loud and harsh, and sounds like it is panned to the left, which I found a distraction at times. Some EQ to lessen the harshness, lower it in volume and possible set it panned central would make it more appealing. The Snare could possibly be a bit more prominent. A touch of reverb over the drums would be helpful, as electric drums can present as a bit dry.

As sound engineers there are some things within our control and some things that are not. My initial impression is fixing some issues at the source here would make a vast improvement compared to what could be achieved through any sound desk adjustments. One impression I got from the services is that the team is fairly one paced dynamically, and musically the output is somewhat crowded both vocally and instrumentally. Everyone seems to singing and playing everything all at the same time. The ideal answer to this is ‘fix it at the source’, which would be having discussions with the musical director to introduce more dynamics to the song flow, such as starting with just a lead vocal, introducing BV vocals in stages, having instruments hang off on certain verses, playing different styles (one guitar pick or lead, another strumming, another strumming with capo on), or periods of just acapella singing.

Having said that, sometimes those things aren’t easily changeable, so we are left with having to try to manipulate that from the sound desk. What you’re aiming for then is increased dimensionality or space in the sound stage that you are creating. Think in three dimensions when listening to the mix. Is there height differences (volume/ compression), width differences (panning) and depth differences (elements of the mix pushed forward or back in the mix – volume, reverb, delay, parallel compression etc).
With regards to your band – some ideas:

Push the lead vocal forward in the mix so it sits a bit more clearly on top. Volume increase, specific EQ (make it brighter than the BV’s), a shorter reverb or perhaps a quick slap delay. Even a bit of parallel compression can make the lead vocal pop. The volume fader is probably the most powerful tool here – either put the lead up or turn other things down.

Aim to blend the background vocals and sit them below the lead vocal as a group, without having one particular BV stand out. EQ a bit of the brightness off the top, sit the volume below the lead, use a longer reverb, apply some compression. One way on the SQ to do this is to send all the BV’s to a group and apply your compression / EQ / Effects as a group which gives them more cohesion. Consider panning the individual BV’s off centre, keeping in mind a vocalist on stage R needs to panned to the L so that what someone hears in the L speaker corresponds to the visual they are seeing. You don’t need a lot of panning, but it tidies up the centre space as a pocket for the leader to sit in. The BV’s can also do with a lot more reverb for my liking.

Guitars – similarly, put the leader’s guitar central and perhaps pan the other two a bit left and right. Don’t EQ them all the same.

Casio keys – are the pads coming straight from the Casio or the laptop next to it?

Congregational mics – consider adding some of these, as they can add the ambience that you need to make the online congregation feel like they are there in the room Pan them hard L/R, set the HPF high – and use in periods of acapella or applause etc.

Keep doing what you’re doing. Constantly reviewing your mixes and striving for improvement is where we all need to be at!

[ozdocParticipant]

Check that there isn’t a compressor/ limiter on Aux 6 main output.

[ozdocParticipant]

Unfortunately no. You can’t use the USB-SQ drive and USB-B port at the same time. You have to select which option you want to use. (setup – audio – USB tab)

[ozdocParticipant]

Send all the drums to a group then send that group to the Aux mix? (even just have a specific drum group for IEMs if you desire – Turn the L/R off for that group) (Downside is the group follows the FOH drum mix balance.)
or.. Use SQ4U app and have all the drums controlled by a master control wheel for each IEM mix? Once the balance is correct you’ve got control over master drum volume to IEM with one touch.
or.. Don’t adjust all the drums to IEM because, really, who needs all the drums in IEMs except the drummer?
or.. Double patch as Mike has mentioned.

Plenty of options.
Seems what you’re really asking for is ganging ability specific to just a individual Aux mix.

[ozdocParticipant]

Assuming as you said you have already split the one input to two channels – this occurs post preamps. The gain on either channel controls the one preamp for that input. With dual channels inputs like this the gain, once set, should be left alone. (Anything after the gain has independent control for that channel strip – HPF / gate/ EQ / Compressor etc.) As mentioned above it’s best to get the balance of your music / spoken word correct via your auxillary mix. A properly set gain for front of house generally should also give adequate gain for your online mix.

But if you really do need more gain on the Pastors online mix channel you can also adjust the digital trim on that channel.

As mentioned by Mike C splitting the Pastor into two channels does add another level of complexity but we find it helpful for EQ reasons, with the room and online mixes requiring different EQ parameters for our spoken word.

[ozdocParticipant]

AsherN. Re: using PC software to remote into the SQ. We can do that with our church SQ7. We have it connected to an old Mac running MixPad. If there are problems that other operators are experiencing during rehearsal or what not, I can remote into the Mac via AnyDesk or TeamViewer and troubleshoot the setup from home.
So you could leave an old junker PC running mixpad connected to the SQ and do similar.

[ozdocParticipant]

And don’t forget to turn the audience mic group ‘MainLR’ (FOH) off in the Routing screen also.

[ozdocParticipant]

I’ve had no issues using a Samsung T5 500GB SSD 3.1 external drive.

[ozdocParticipant]

Dude.
You have two fussy drummers. Just store two scenes on the SQ mixer, one for each drummer.
The other muso’s can adjust their mix quickly in rehearsal (aka soundcheck) – then sound engineer saves the scene for the upcoming service. Pretty simples. If the musicians are varying dramatically then I’d suggest they are either too fussy or need more training.
I think we forget how it was like prior to IEM’s using wedges. They were happy days though.
The other option is a fixed device for the drums such as a ME-1. Store every drummers mixes, no one else gets hurt.
But you can’t be having 10 individual musicians saving their own auxillary sends via SQ4U repetitively overriding the sound tech’s scenes.

[ozdocParticipant]

We use both. ME-1s for instruments (Drums, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Electric, Keys, Spare) and SQ4you for singers via 4x stereo wireless IEMs.
It seems to be best of both worlds for a medium size band. Which every way you go the key is training of your musicians in using their in-ears effectively, and being confident with the software / hardware they are using.

[Author]

Posts