Venue Template File
I figured some of you who are using Venue systems might be interested to see my current default file. In order to view, all you need to do is grab the standalone editor app from the Digidesign website (2nd item in the list – 2.7.1 standalone software).
I’d be very interested to see yours as well. Just shoot me an email if you’d like to share! If you’re running on another platform but curious about Venue, this is a great way to investigate. Although I must warn you, this is exactly how I started a year ago. Fast forward a year and our old Yamaha PM1D system has been replaced. So enter at your own risk hehehe.
The matching default input list can be found here.
read morePlaces to go
I am an audio geek. There, I said it. With this in mind, there are several cool online resources to stay up on what’s happening and learn new things. The first few are Digidesign specific…the others not so much.
First, and most importantly, the Digidesign User Conference is invaluable and was a factor in our decision to partner with Digi. I’m so glad the Venue has a vibrant user community. This is a daily check-in and read.
The next one might be new to some, old to others. Regardless…there’s a great resource of tips and tricks for the Venue platform that’s published by Digidesign on their site. Topics such as the events list, tap tempo, managing multitrack recordings, gain guess, etc. Really good stuff. If you want to receive these tips as a part of the live sound newsletter that’s normally published once a month by Digidesign, go to their site and sign up. There’s far more usable content than sales babble so you won’t be disappointed.
Another really great resource is the archived Webinars that Robert Scovill has been conducting the past 8 months. Each one lasts about an hour and includes a 45 minute presentation and 15 minutes of q&a. Topics include introduction to Venue, Virtual Soundcheck, Plug-Ins, Snapshots, PQ/Aviom Integration, D-Show vs. D-Show Profile, etc. A new webinar normally happens on the last Wednesday of every month. Check it out here. While these webinars definitely focus on Digidesign hardware, many of them also include just general good practice stuff from Scovi that would be beneficial to users of other platforms.
Outside of Digidesign, the best overall live audio forum I’ve ever found is the Live Audio Board over at ProSoundWeb.com. There is another board there for Church sound but I don’t find that one very inspiring. But the LAB has a huge list of contributors and is normally a pretty good read.
A new one to me that I think is flying way below the radar is a forum set up at Rat Sound’s website. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a pretty big fan of Dave Rat. The forum on their site is full of some really great content and, if you’re like me, you’ll be sucked in till you lose track of time the first few times you visit. Places to specifically check out are the Doing the Gig, Sound Questions, and Sound Business. Archives go all the way back to 2004 so you can keep yourself busy here for a while!
read moreBroadcast Mix Part 3
So to wrap up this topic, here’s a few more learnings and such…
I mentioned we actually have two broadcast/outside world mixes. The first is the one I’ve outlined. #2 is just a slight variation. When we rolled out the new chain, we had one problem with it for the building feed – tvs, lobby speakers, hallways, etc. All of the work to create a more dynamic and organic mix really didn’t work in these places because the volume fluctuated too much. Sometimes it would be too much or too little in these spaces. The answer became creating a second mono feed that was heavily limited and squashed and only sending it to the building spots. This feed has much less ambience/audience and two stages of limiting – one individually over the music and speech mixes, then a second stage over the combined mix just before it leaves the console. The individual limiters do the majority of the work inside the element and the overall limiter acts as a brickwall to keep the difference between music and speech nearly identical for playback at low volumes. That way the feed from the auditorium is always present in these places and it sounds great for what it is.
I have found that the position of each set of ambience/audience mics is very important. The ideal position I’ve found for everything up on the stage is as close to stage level as possible. At one point I tried putting the shotguns way up in the air near the PA cabinets and this was a problem in two ways. First, there was more PA bleed then I liked. Second, because they were so high, I felt like the immediacy of the audience energy was lost. I also tried putting them on very short stands and just placing them on the far ends of the stage deck. This was my favorite position actually, but it was a pain because cables to the mics had to pass over traffic paths. Also, because the mics were so accessible, I found them inadvertently moving over the course of a weekend if anyone bumped one or kids played with them. The final landing point attached to the bottom of our side screens ended up being a good compromise because it kept the position nice and low but still put them out of the way enough where we don’t have to mess with cables and their aim will remain consistent.
I think we’re still making minor adjustments to the mix week to week as we continue to adjust for the best balance between the direct source and the ambience/audience mics. Since this chain needs to be a set and forget thing, there are some times when it would be nice to have a bit more presence from the crowd, such as during the worship in the sample I posted in Part 2. But where we’ve arrived at works for so much of what we do that I think we’re going to choose to compromise in a place that works pretty well for the far majority of what we do. It would be really nice one day to have a separate position with someone mixing strictly for broadcast, but until that day ever comes, I’m pretty pleased with what we’ve landed on.
So there you have it. Questions, feel free to ask away! There are more samples of the new chain on my website. The only clip not recorded through this chain is the Christmas 2007 opener.
read moreBroadcast Mix Part 2
Here’s the process we now take to create the mix…
We now use three sets of ambience/audience mics, each with a different purpose for capturing the room. Inspired by some great discussion on the Digidesign User Forum, my implementation is…
- Mics #1 are a set of shotgun mics (purchased for this project) on the outside corners of our stage, mounted just under our side screens, pointed out into the room. These are the primary audience pickup source because so much of the audience’s energy is directed towards the stage that these do a great job of capturing without adding too much PA to the mix.
- Mics #2 are a set of Crown PCCs placed on the lip of the stage at the 1/3 and 2/3 lines from left to right. These combine with the shotguns to provide some presence and immediacy to the signal since another set of shotguns wouldn’t be acceptable aesthetically in these positions.
- Mics #3 are a pair of Shure SM81s hung from the first catwalk, almost at the half way point of the room, also on the 1/3 and 2/3 lines to the stage. These mics serve almost entirely the purpose of room ambience – making the mix sound like it is happening in the auditorium rather than happening in a dead studio.
- We may still look to add an additional set or two but I’m stuck because adding them will mean needing to deal with delay times between those mics and the rest currently in place. Two of my current three sets are directly in line with the PA so there’s little issue there. The delay induced by the third set certainly does some phase stuff to the mix but the added space it puts in the mix when the speaker is up is worth the compromise to me. So we’ve dodged the bullet to this point and I’d like to avoid having to go there with more mics. This is one of the only limitations of creating the broadcast mix inside the Venue rather than in an outboard mixer/processor. There is no way to have the degree of time alignment control that would be needed in the broadcast feed without making other more significant sacrifices.
All channels on the console are split up into one of three main bus paths – master L/R is music, center is speech, and subgroup 7/8 for standalone playback sources. These three paths are then combined in the matrixes to feed the PA and outside world. Our PA processing is also set up for speech and music, so there is a stereo music matrix (with playback included in it) and a mono speech matrix that feed the PA. On the video side, music, speech, and playback are combined with the three sets of ambience/audience mics in a stereo matrix. A nice Massey mastering limiter, phoenix cranesong, and 7 band EQ for any trouble spots are put over that mix as a whole and the finished result is what you hear below.
According to Smaart, music averages at 88-95 dB in the auditorium, speech and videos run 68-75 dB. That equals an average 20 dB natural difference that feels right in the main auditorium. In the processing of audio for video, I am actually adding back 6 dB cumulatively to speech, making the speech/music difference 14 dB rather than 20 dB and this is really important. Too little added back makes speech too low compared to music, so you have to turn it up. But too much added does the reverse – turn it down when the speaker comes up.
That is why playback has to be split up from music in the broadcast matrix. If playback is lumped in with the band, it comes out too low on video compared to speech because playback is in that lower dynamic range in the room. But if playback were lumped in with speech directly instead, it would be in mono and receive all kinds of undesirable processing in the speech world that isn’t desired. So…on the PA side, playback and music are each sent to the music PA matrix at equal volume. But on the video side, playback is sent to the matrix at the same level as speech but through its own path. So if speech and playback were sent to the matrix at 100% level, music is sent at 90% level.
Here’s a sample of the finished result of worship from our New Community service last night…
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In my next post I’ll outline the final steps necessary to fine tune for building feeds vs. broadcast.
read moreNew Broadcast Processing Part 1
I’ve mentioned our broadcast mix chain several times but have yet to really outline what we’re doing as of late. Inspired by some good friends, I began a journey about 5 months ago to re-engineer the chain. The signal chain I inherited when I started at Kensington was based around a model picked up from Willow Creek in Chicago. You can read more about it here. Basically, everything through the console is split up to two main outputs – one for music, and one for speech. That way each can be processed independently, then combined and leveled to create the broadcast feed. A single set of ambience mics are added to the feed and ducked by the music mix to mask transitions in the console when nothing was passing but otherwise stay out of the way so the mix would be very present and the result is a pretty solid product.
This worked really well and was a great improvement from previous incarnations, but the biggest critique of our video mixes was what I would call “overprocessing” – almost a studio quality to the mix rather than feeling more organic and live, and a severe lack of audience and room ambience to the mix. In fact, whenever something artistic was happening on stage, the ambience mics were ducked out tremendously. Our feed to broadcast often times sounded more like a studio recording with audience applause when nothing was happening on stage rather than an organic live album that accurately reflected what it actually felt like to be in the room for the service.
When we upgraded our system to the Digidesign Venue platform last Summer, I took it as the opportunity to revamp the broadcast chain to move a different direction philosophically. Goals for the new approach:
- Experience listening to the mix would become more holistic of what it actually was to sit in the room – more ambience & audience, less processing, more live and organic
- Consistent product based on what’s happening in the room that translates well week to week with no outside input (i.e. no surprises – if it worked in the room, it will work on tape)
- All processing completed inside the console so it would be easily repeatable in other venues, but transparent enough to the audio engineer that guys with different approaches using the same console would not be hindered or distracted by the outside world feeds.
My next post will outline the steps we’ve taken to implement a new process.
read moreChristmas 2008 Wrap-up
Christmas at Kensington for this year is officially in the can and in light of all of the system changes made this year in audio world, I thought it would be fitting to outline some learnings and experiences. I’ve started writing and will gradually put things up over the next week or two.
In the meantime, here’s a sample of the big epic tune that was the centerpiece of the service as part of an original 9 minute spoken-word, dance, video, & music package. You’re listening to a live FOH board mix simply through the new broadcast chain (more on this later). Little bit of Massey limiting and Cranesong Phoenix and presto! This track was written by our music director, Danny Cox, for this service and has quickly become one of my favorite songs of the last few years. Enjoy!
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More photos of the service can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/kccxmasphotos
read moreIntroduction
My name is Tim Corder. I started this blog in February 2007 because there were so few of what I considered good church audio resources available at the time for my team. Fast forward over 5 years and I'm still at it, sharing learnings about the journey towards making audio great. I go through periods where I post a lot and other times when I don't. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share it all with you. Thanks for visiting! 
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