Modern digital mixers bring a lot of benefits and flexibility to modern live sound. One of the most useful (and potentially risky) features on many models is the ability to remotely control them with tablets and smartphones. What follows is a look at some of the pro’s and con’s of using tablets for live mixing, as reported by some talented and church-focused audio engineers.
Front-of-house
Mixing front-of-house (FOH) can be a challenge in a lot of venues, either because of uneven sound throughout the room, or because the FOH position isn’t in an ideal listening spot. During sound check or rehearsal, in particular, having wireless control gives you a chance to verify and easily adjust what everyone will hear throughout the room. “A tablet is key to making sure your mix translates to any part of the venue, and I’ve also used one to do system checks. I don’t want to have to walk halfway across the room to adjust something,” says Matt Wentz, audio systems engineer at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill.
“I would stay away from anything that didn’t allow you to block the band members from accidentally controlling the FOH mix via their app.”
Freelance FOH engineer and broadcast audio engineer, Alden Lewis, at Lakewood Church in Houston offers a similar perspective: “The biggest advantage [to using a tablet] is that you can walk the room, because not all rooms are well-balanced throughout. You want to go to the front row where the pastor is sitting and reference how it translates there.”However, while tablets may be quite useful during sound check, not everyone enjoys mixing live on them. Technical Leader Lee Fields in the worship department of Bayside Church, Northern California, feels strongly about using a real console surface during a service: “I need like two or three faders under my hand at a time and on a screen; it just doesn’t feel right. I need to feel it. I need to touch the knobs. It’s like playing the console as an instrument.” Lewis concurs that he prefers to stay on the actual desk as well, the biggest reasons being “ease of workflow, muscle memory and tactile response--and you have access to more things without paging/banking over.”
There are some situations, however, where our experts agree that a tablet alone could do the job. Wentz says, “If you’re just mixing a conference with talking heads, there’s no reason you’d need a surface you’re sitting at.” Fields agrees, saying, “If you’re just doing a few mics and playback, a tablet alone could work.”
Monitor World
As it turns out, one of the most significant benefits of wireless mixing is in monitor world. During sound check, the engineer can interact face-to-face with the musicians while working on their mixes. “Let me stand where you’re standing, let me hear what you’re hearing,” says Fields. This can also make sound check more efficient, according to Wentz, who says, “Musicians don’t have to wait to get someone’s attention, and the musicians and monitor engineer can communicate better. It’s a huge relationship-builder.”You may even want to give the musicians the ability to manage their own mixes using individual smartphones and tablets. While there have been plenty of personal monitor mixer products on the market for quite a time, some modern consoles let each musician remotely control their own mix directly from within the console via a tablet or phone app. In some cases, this can be less expensive and more flexible than dedicated personal monitoring systems. However, there may be risks associated with allowing multiple people to have direct control of console parameters. “I would stay away from anything that didn’t allow you to block the band members from accidentally controlling the FOH mix via their app,“ says Fields.
Other Concerns
Wentz reports that he’s concerned about how app switching may affect console stability: “If they’re checking their email and then switch back to the mix app, what does that do to the console?” It would seem like a console ought to handle that fine, but modern mixers are very complex and may therefore be more susceptible to unexpected behavior. At the very least, it’s worth thoroughly testing something like this before going “live” with it.
“The biggest advantage to using a tablet is that you can walk the room, because not all rooms are well-balanced throughout.”
Whether you’re using tablets as an FOH engineer, monitor engineer, or for personal monitor mixers for the musicians, there’s one potential technical weakness that all of these applications have in common: WiFi connectivity. “Come the time of the service, I wouldn’t touch the tablet. Why would you run something wireless when there’s all the potential for instability live?” says Lewis. Wentz succinctly describes the risk of using a tablet to control a console: “There’s technology in between that could fail on you.” Even when the WiFi seems fine during sound check, and you have an independent network just for console control, the connectivity can suffer once the room fills with people and their devices. They may not be on your network, but the performance can still suffer because of all of the “background noise.”In closing, Fields offers some sage (and terse) advice to prevent mishaps during a service: “Secure your network. Use a separate WiFi network just for remote access to the console, and make sure it’s locked down. It’s not worth the risk of putting something so important on a ‘normal’ network.”
Takeaway
The bottom line is that there can be numerous advantages to the FOH engineer, monitor engineer, and band members (if controlling their own mixes) of mixing wirelessly. Walking the room and making adjustments during sound check and working face-to-face with musicians to adjust their mixes are both huge wins. And if you’re adventurous, or working with a manageable number of channels, it may be practical to mix an entire service or event with just a tablet. But just remember that a real console surface will often give you quicker reaction times, easier ability to multitask, and higher reliability than a WiFi connection ever could.For now, we all wait and see what the next technological evolution in live sound will be….
