[RyanParticipant]

That 3rd bullet was straight from the soundonsound article you linked to, so don’t tell me you disagree, send an email to the author of the article.

It’s a trade off, temporary mild discomfort with AC set colder before the service then to “normal” for the service, or less distracting noise during the sermon.

To minimize noise in the preacher mic, get a directional headset mic like the DPA d:fine 4088, or a Shure WH20 so you can turn the mic up more before feedback (and compression to tame when the preacher decides to shout really loud).

You’re saying the band is too loud, and the preacher is too soft, right? Does the preacher have their own microphone or are they sharing it with the band? If they have their own microphone, compress it and crank the make-up gain (to bring the compressed loud preacher voice up to or above where it was before, and soft parts will be louder than before because of the make up gain). Doing that will not make the music louder if the preacher has his own mic. If the music is too loud, compress the channels for the band. If the preacher and music are sharing a microphone, get the preacher their own microphone. Is the preacher talking at the same time as the band is playing? Turn down the band and/or turn up the preacher, or talk to the preacher and music director about the problems that causes and suggest changing things to not have the preacher talk while the band plays.

The way it seems right now, upward compression is a magic cure that has been overlooked for years. Since you said you’ve implemented your own upward compression plugin, use that. Connect the mixer to your laptop using the USB port on the back of the mixer, and send the preacher mic to a channel on the DAW with your upward compression plugin, then send the output from the DAW back to a channel on the mixer and have that going to the main speakers in the room instead of the raw signal from the preacher’s mic. Then you can play around and see if upward compression helps solve your problem or not.

Try also posting your question on reddit.com/r/livesound, there’s a bunch of people there whose job is making things sound good, and you’ll probably get faster responses.

[RyanParticipant]

In the soundonsound article that you linked to, there are 3 points that I think are relevant:
1. It mentions that finding a physical device that can do upward compression is rare
2. It mentions that parallel compression is used to achieve the same goal as upward compression
3. This direct quote about upwards compression: “However, if you spend a few moments thinking about the idea of genuine upwards compression, you’ll realise that it wouldn’t actually be a lot of use in real-world applications, because it would probably raise the noise floor to wholly inappropriate levels. For example, take an upwards compressor with a gentle 2:1 ratio and a threshold at -20dBFS. If the ambient noise floor of the recording was at, say, -80dBFS, the act of compression would drag it up to an appalling -50dBFS, which probably isn’t really what you’d want!”

[RyanParticipant]

Turn on the HVAC before the sermon, turn it off during the sermon, then turn it back on again after.

If your microphone is picking up 60+dB of background noise, then upward compression will also make whatever background noise is getting picked up louder. Unless you’re saying it will somehow make just the voices louder and ignore everything else the mic is picking up?

[RyanParticipant]

Hm… user name is ChrisEdward, profile says Christopher Gorham (actor with at least some fame)… and the link in the post is to a specific company that doesn’t even appear in the first page of Google search results when looking using the key word filled title they have on their home page. Seems like an attempt at a subtle ad/spam.

[RyanParticipant]

Finally! After a year they released the PC editor. https://www.allen-heath.com/sq-v1-4/#downloads

[RyanParticipant]

It looks like the wait is over, at least for Windows users! https://www.allen-heath.com/sq-v1-4/#downloads

[RyanParticipant]

What are some of the terms you were expecting to have defined?

A&H has a number of videos related to the Qu series on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AllenandHeathUK/playlists

[RyanParticipant]

@williamadams – I think what they are saying is that the topic OP asked about is a more general live sound question that could apply to any brand of mixer, rather than a question related to working with an A&H mixer.

[RyanParticipant]

I’d say your interpretation is a bit off — the way you’re describing how the feature should work, I’d say your interpretation would be “This allows you to ADD the compressed signal TO the uncompressed signal” (“blend to” doesn’t make much sense, since “blend” is basically a “mix” of things that have been combined, and the “to” gives a direction like the mixture is changing; “blend to” would be more like a cross-fade between two images, where the proportions of each are changing). “Add to” could make sense if you always had the uncompressed signal (fixed amount) and were just adding in a compressed signal, but it isn’t a completely accurate interpretation of what the manual says. “With” is roughly equivalent in meaning to “together” in the way they used it, so a closer interpretation would be that “blend with” is saying you can mix the compressed and uncompressed signals together, possibly with one not being present at all. When I read “with” in the manual, it doesn’t convey a sense of one signal being added to the other (one doesn’t feel like it was the original and always has to be present).

As for the default, it sounds like it’s individual preference. Possibly the A&H reasoning for the current default was that you might want to dial in compressor settings either before or after pressing the parallel path button, which wouldn’t be as simple if the default were flipped; or it could be to avoid a sudden jump from compression to no compression or vice versa when toggling the parallel path button.

[RyanParticipant]

The B&H listing says it’s out of stock, but has the available in 7-14 days —- maybe it’s a special order type of thing?

The price listed is $1800. At first I thought it was a lot, but then looked at other options for 16i8o Dante devices (like 2ch adapters for $1550, but no preamps and lots of cable/network switch), and it seems like the pricing is at least inline with those, or even a pretty good deal considering it includes preamps and operates at 96kHz.

[RyanParticipant]

Ah yes, I mostly use a Qu-SB which doesn’t have an Alt out. Under the I/O Patch -> Surface tabs there is a setting to make it Pre/Post fade for the LR main mix, or L+R for a mono option. Among being able to choose any other mix/group/matrix/pafl as the source.

[RyanParticipant]

Exactly, the faders won’t reflect the changes in levels from the main mix (if main mix has bass all the way down, then no bass will be in this other mix even if its bass fader is all the way up).

[RyanParticipant]

One way to set the individuals as post fade is with the mix selected (the setting for a channel can vary for each mix), press and hold the buttons to the far left of the green “select” buttons — then press the green buttons for the channels you want as post fade so that the light is on.

The faders when that mix is selected won’t move, but the volume levels will change based on changes made with the main LR mix.

[RyanParticipant]

Since you’re using the Qu-32, there are two approaches you could take. One is setting all the channels on the mix (ie mix 9-10) to post-fade and set the faders to the same level (or slightly changed for some of the instruments to account for the location sounding different being farther/closer to the stage); you can also EQ the mix output. The other way if you just want the same thing as LR without any EQ or other processing, or individual channel level adjustment is to use one of the matrix outputs on the Qu-32.

[RyanParticipant]

Aaronious, what’s wrong with the post fade mix that has been suggested before? Just route the input channels used and FX returns to the mix. We do it every weekend for recording services — the recording has reverb and is not affected by the processing on the LR output.

[Author]

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