Image courtesy of Christ’s Church of the Valley, Phoenix, AZ.
Back in the “olden days,” when padded pews (some shade of mauve, in many cases) ruled the earth and when the extent of visual media in church was overhead projectors and CRT TVs on roll-around stands, the idea of dialing in a mix or training a new audio engineer was a foreign and painful-sounding one.
With an analog console, the only way for an engineer to practice, tune, or prepare was with a full band on stage. Want to spend an extra hour dialing in the snap or crack of your snare? Sorry, but the drummer has to leave early to pick up his VCR from the repair shop before they close.
And then, unless you glued communion cups upside-down over the dials for protection, you’re just one reckless, unsupervised child (or bored, mischievous pre-teen) away from having all your settings yanked wide open in their attempt to make every dial on the console match.
Thank heavens for digital consoles! While the ability to recall scenes or snapshots is certainly a lifesaver in many cases (especially since empty communion cups may be harder to find laying around!), the ability to record channels straight off the desk has opened up so many possibilities, not just to allow tracks to be remixed in post, but to allow literally everything to be re-manipulated or recreated at any time.
Virtual soundcheck has become a go-to workflow in most environments that have digital audio consoles, and the reasons why are prolific.
Image courtesy of Eleven22 Church, Jacksonville, Fla.
“There are lots of ways that churches can use a virtual workflow,” says Blair Drake, the lead audio engineer at Phoenix-based megachurch Christ’s Church of the Valley, “[like] to improve an overall mix for the room and help retune a PA, to dial in scenes after getting a rehearsal capture prior to a weekend service or special event, to use to train/coach members of the worship team, and to train/coach members of the audio/production team, among others.”
“Sunday morning during soundcheck is rarely the best time to try something new.” - Blair Drake, Lead Audio Engineer, Christ’s Church of the Valley, Phoenix
Blair Drake, Lead Audio Engineer, Christ’s Church of the Valley, Phoenix, AZ
“We’ve been using virtual soundcheck since I joined the team in 2012,” he continues. “There are two primary uses for us. The first is for mix preparation between a rehearsal and a service or live event. This is time for the mix engineer to refine the mix without the band onstage or the pressure of an audience. Occasionally we’ll also incorporate timecode, and this is an opportunity to refine and build snapshot transition times and crossfades with LTC in virtual soundcheck. It’s an advanced workflow, but virtual soundcheck makes it very powerful to program perfectly. The second primary use is for practicing and training. Our audio team is taking regular times to get behind a desk and workshop mix techniques, processes, and work on mixes together using previous weekend’s sessions. This is incredibly useful for training new engineers and for our seasoned engineers to further develop skills.”
By recording every channel off of the console, the engineer has the benefit of playing back any of those channels after the fact. It’s a great way to help clean up the sound of a particular instrument or vocalist for a live event, but it’s also a vitally important way for an engineer to gain valuable experience. They can fiddle and play with settings and plug-ins without it impacting something live.
“The biggest selling point is in the idea that this isn’t just a workflow to get the mix sounding 5% better between rehearsal and service,” Drake notes. “This is the primary way for audio engineers to train, develop, and grow. Audio engineers need to practice skills development just like musicians. This is the way.”
“How many times have we wished we could get the bass or guitar player to listen to their tone from our perspective!” - Debbie Keough, Production Manager, Water of Life Community Church, Fontana, CA
“To become a master at anything, you have to put in the time,” notes Debbie Keough, the production manager at SoCal’s Water of Life Community Church. “Recording your rehearsals are essential because you can come back later and work through an idea, a challenge, a change, or even try completely new workflows. Best of all, doing all this in an offline environment, without the pressure of a pastor or musician on stage waiting on you gives one the freedom to explore every aspect of mixing audio.”
For Keough, the benefit also extends to how she trains her volunteer teams. Water of Life has multiple venues (and multiple types of consoles), so the only way she can gain comfort in having volunteers move around freely is by training them on concepts that can apply across the board to different consoles.
“You can safely take a brand-new-to-audio individual, plunk them down on a console using VS (virtual soundcheck), and just let them explore every aspect of audio,” she says. “I mean, don’t be afraid at all to put this kind of person on your most expensive console. Everything they learn will transfer to any console. I put new and up-and-coming volunteers on my biggest consoles and focus on training them the basics of EQ and compression. Then show them how to successfully look to apply that to any console they walk up to.”
Keough’s setups are proof that virtual soundcheck workflows can run the gamut from big consoles to small and can bridge multiple types of AV-over-IP technology.
Her main worship center has an Avid S6L that sends between 60-100 channels into ProTools on a MacPro, carried digitally via the AVB (Audio Video Bridging) protocol. This is a nearly identical setup to Drake’s workflow at CCV.
Keough’s gym venue has an Allen & Heath Avantis that uses Reaper or ProTools to capture to a Macbook Pro using Dante protocol, and her smaller venues (and a portable rig) use a Behringer X32 and its built-in USB connection to allow for capture into Reaper or ProTools as well.
Virtual soundcheck is a process that works and scales to audio consoles of any size and can work with a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of nearly any type. Almost all newer digital audio consoles now come with onboard abilities to export channels to a DAW, and some consoles even come equipped with free or built-in licenses for this.
Other options, beyond the aforementioned Reaper and ProTools, include Logic Pro, Studio One, and Nuendo. For platforms that aren’t available for free, there are often free trial downloads available so users can test the software and explore its features before committing to a purchase.
And while Dante gets the most press for its audio-over-IP capabilities with consoles and capture, consoles using that protocol will require a Dante Virtual Soundcard license, while those using AVB or MADI do not (although they may require their own interfaces or licenses based on the capture computer or software used).
Austin Himrich is the audio production engineer at Substance Church, a multisite ministry in Minnesota.
“In our setup, we use the SSL L200 for our FOH and Broadcast positions,” he explains. “We use Macbook Pros at each mixing position. These are for Waves and Multitrack recording via Reaper (Licensed) and house music. To route from the audio desk into our MacMini, we use the Waves DigiGrid MGO MADI Soundgrid interface out of our effects (FX) Loop expander from the SSL. This allows us to use 64 inputs into the computer to route into our Soundgrid and Reaper programs. On average, we capture 39 channels per week.”
For Himrich, the primary benefit of their virtual flow is the amount of practice and prep that he and his team are able to do between a midweek rehearsal and a weekend service.
Use time during the week to do more collaboration with the worship team on their sound and technique. This can help greatly when building a bridge between the stage and the sound booth and diminishing an “us versus them” mentality.
“On an average week, we work primarily with the rehearsals on Thursdays, which are for Sunday services,” he says. “This gives us time before services to allow our volunteer audio team members to mix and prepare for Sunday services at their convenience. In addition to dialing in mixes, virtual soundchecks provide space and additional time to spend training volunteers. This helps in creating and managing the quality and consistency across all our services.”
Image courtesy of Eleven22 Church, Jacksonville, Fla.
While there is tremendous benefit in allowing engineers that extra time to work on prepping a mix for the weekend, another is that it opens the doors in the bigger picture for different people to hear the tracks in different ways.
“The mix might sound great at FOH but the only person sitting there is you,” notes Landon Robertson, the audio media director for Jacksonville, Fla., megachurch Church of Eleven22.
“The mix might sound great at FOH but the only person sitting at there is you,” notes Landon Robertson, the audio media director for Jacksonville, Fla., megachurch Church of Eleven22. “It’s great to be able to walk around the room and sit in the congregation’s seats to hear what they are hearing.
Do the vocals carry cleanly to the back of the room? Is the low-end even and full, or do the flown subs cause some of that energy to pass over the first few rows? And for something that seemingly sounds great at FOH, how does it sound from the pastor’s seat on the front row?
And yes, playing tracks back in an empty room can’t give a fully accurate picture of what it might sound like during a service, since a room full of bodies aren’t present to absorb sound and limit reflections, and there’s no added stage noise like might be present in a service.
But as CCV’s Drake said, “Sunday morning during soundcheck is rarely the best time to try something new. There are so many other variables to building a mix when the band is onstage and you’ve got services starting soon.”
So, consider using that preservice window as more of a line check or tech run-through just to ensure that everything is working properly. And use time during the week to do more collaboration with the worship team on their sound and technique.
This can help greatly when building a bridge between the stage and the sound booth and diminishing an “us versus them” mentality.
“How many times have we wished we could get the bass or guitar player to listen to their tone from our perspective!” Keough exclaims. But when doing a virtual soundcheck midweek, “I can play back tracks, mute their channels, and let them work on their tone from FOH playing along with weekend recordings. They get a very good idea of how their tone is translating out of the PA when mixed with the entire band. It opens up a fantastic collaboration space with your musicians.”
She adds, “It’s really the only opportunity where you can get musicians, creatives, tech, maybe even pastors all in one space to collaborate on what your church audio should sound like.”
The benefits to implementing a virtual soundcheck workflow are multitudinous, and it’s adaptable across multiple console types, capture computers, DAW softwares and protocols, and skill levels. It can help volunteers get better, can help engineers and musicians collaborate, and can help solve acoustic or technical challenges by finding ways to optimize a sound system. Its components can be scalable to budgets of any size and can work in any size room or auditorium.
As for the potential downsides?
“Honestly, the biggest con,” Keough points out, “is not doing it!”
