Obviously, as of late, the world of church ministry has made a big shift into the realm of streaming content. Much has been written and continues to be written about making this transition. Beyond understanding how to correctly leverage technology, however, lies the more elusive issue of how to approach it from an artistic perspective. In this case specifically, CPM discusses audio for broadcast and how to improve it. Most organizations want their audio to not just be serviceable, but to engage and captivate the audience’s desire to join us, worship with us, and participate in what we have to share with them. As anyone who has been down this route, or is currently working their way through it can tell you, this shift towards a more artistic expression can be a challenging and yet rewarding process. If you haven’t thought of mixing as an artistic expression, allow me to encourage you to do so. It’s very hard to define the concept of needing a good mix while also holding the idea that mixing is not an art form. Doing so places a demand on your engineer without providing them the context in which they can learn to succeed.
Seismic shift + recommendations
As our community works toward improving this expression, it makes sense to consider that there may need to be a shift or transition in the way that we think about mixing audio. This is especially true if an engineer is most experienced in working with live PA at the FOH position. In some ways, for streaming audio, we need start adopting the mindset of a studio engineer with respect to the mix elements that we use and how we put a mix together. Let’s start by considering the overall level of the mix.
Remember, the live environment contains natural reverb and room interactions that we can make use of—ones that don’t naturally exist in the broadcast mix.
Mixing for the streaming medium is much like mixing for an album with respect to levels. Specifically, we have a very limited amount of headroom in stream-based audio as compared to mixing live on a PA. Effectively, the difference between the average audio level and the maximum loudness available to a stream is much smaller than it is in a live venue. This is why there is usually some form of limiting done as the last step in the chain for streaming audio. In addition, many of the stream providers will perform level normalization if your content is too loud. In these cases, the provider will simply turn your content down so that any headroom you give away by over-limiting will just be wasted. If, however, the average level is too low, your stream may be too quiet relative to other streams, which can then reduce the impact of your program. I generally suggest shooting for an average level of -14 LUF with your worship segment a bit louder, say -13 LUF to -11 LUF. This seems to be a sweet spot for the prominent streaming providers. Another area of our mix that can cause the audio to come across in a less than engaging or artistic way is having too much sparseness.
In general, mixes that have fuller content in terms of both the stereo field and the tonality are the ones that come across as being more exciting or engaging. This, however, is not to say that we need an over-abundance of instruments or vocal parts. We all can think of a number of albums where the mix was incredible, but there were only a few parts. Within those mixes it is more than likely that the tonal and stereo space was addressed in very intentional ways to provide that fullness. From a practical perspective in today’s streaming environment, one of the biggest ways to accomplish this fullness is to make use of instruments and parts that can provide distinction throughout the stereo field (providing a sense of width) and that are tonally separated (providing distinct coverage of the overall spectrum). One of the easiest ways to do this is to switch to stereo sources, especially instruments, wherever possible. Along this line of thinking, many modern keyboards and guitar rigs provide stereo outputs that provide signals that can enhance the instrument’s fullness and add texture. Even if you are making use of an acoustic instrument, such as a piano, consider mic’ing them in a stereo configuration and hard panning the microphones. This is also an area where backing tracks such as pads and minor chordal or guitar parts can come in handy. Here we are not necessarily looking to add musical parts as much as we are aural texture and nuance. This strategy, for example, is one way that so many songs on our favorite albums contain very high track counts. Obviously though, we will always have some sources or instruments that are mono in nature. For those, some added reverb or delay can help, especially if you pan it somewhat away from the instrument itself. Ultimately, anything that we can do to add width and depth to our mix will cause it to be more complete and more pleasing to the ear.
Effects and their impact
Along this same line of thought, the use of effects, such as choruses, reverbs, and delays, help immensely in creating the artistic sense of space and cohesion necessary for an engaging mix. Good use of effects works to smooth the relationship between different sounds, or lack of sound, over time. Just like the eye can be sensitive to sharp contrasts between the two sides of a line, our hearing can be sensitive to the contrast of sound on either side of a point in time, especially when those sounds are quite disparate. This can lead to a sense of starkness. For example, the light use of a short-timed reverb can help blend the trailing edge of a word or phrase, smoothing out the refrain and gently transitioning the ear to the next mix element. Alternatively, we could use a long timed reverb to transition the ear to a less dense portion of the mix, leading to the suggestion of a large room or open space, or whatever the listener may imagine in response. In many cases, it can be beneficial to use both a short and a long reverb simultaneously to suggest different aspects of how the mix elements relate to each other.
Anything that we can do to add width and depth to our mix will cause it to be more complete and more pleasing to the ear.
The use of effects is one of the largest areas of struggle for those who are new to broadcast mixing, because they play a more pivotal and intentional role in a broadcast mix than they generally do for a live environment. Remember, the live environment contains natural reverb and room interactions that we can make use of, ones that don’t exist in the broadcast arena. In addition, compounding this problem can be our own timidity towards the use of effects out of a concern of overdoing it—like I did on song three just last week, which brings me to my last thought. The reality is that the best way to learn is to do, and while you may make a mistake, you can always learn from it. In the world of artistic endeavors, mistakes are a required tool in the learning process. A process that I encourage you to lean into.
