Church Sound conflict

[pryzm]

I hope i can describe this properly.

I am managing the sound at our church. I am in the process of doing some upgrades. I am having a disgusting experience with the recording and the live sound.

Let me describe the setup. We use a Behringer Europower PMP5000 mixer, a monitor and house speaker amp set up (everything runs in and out of the mixer).

We use guitars, Bass, piano and mics. We also have a set up for playing CD's and Ipods and so on.

My issue is this. If i am mixing the house sound alone without working on a recording i usually get a good house mix. but when i hit record, everything goes wrong. I have a great house mix but the recording is terrible. the guitar or bass or something is always too loud or something just isnt balanced. But when i am mixing for a recording everything sounds fine in the recording but terrible in the house.

I'm not sure what to do about this. Something gets sacrificed.

Can you recommend any equipment or configuration that i can emply that would assist in rectifying this problem?

thanks

[cmchamp]

pryzm:
Welcome aboard.
From where are you grabbing your recording signal? If you're trying to record off the RCA outputs, there's where you'll have trouble.
When mixing for house, you are constantly compensating for the acoustic situation in the room - drums, guitar amps, bass amps, keyboard amps, stage wash from monitors, etc. let alone trying to bump up certain instruments (bass guitar) to compensate for inadequate power or loudspeakers.
When you mix for recording - you don't have those considerations in effect, so those compensations are amplified/multiplied when you try to record your house mix.
I am not familiar with the board you have, but it doesn't look like you can utilize an EFX output without loosing the functionality of the internal EFX.
Generally, in order to do what you are wanting to do, one would utilize an AUX send, or pair of AUX sends that were pre-fader allowing for the appropriate levels of each instrument to be sent to your recording device.
C.

[Rad]

I'm also not familiar with your setup, but I'd suggest that you record individual instruments on separate channels if you have that capability, and then remix at home or in a studio. Then all you have to worry about is getting the right levels and everything else is fixable.

[Audioholic]

The mix for the house and the mix for the recording path will always sound different. I suggest that you mix for the house first, if that is the priority. I have seen people who also record live to 2 track focus too much on the recorded mix (if its being sent from the stereo out), changing levels and sound to fit the recording though headphones, and the house mix suffers substantially.

A live to 2 track recording is always usually a bit ugly, no where as near as good as what you think you are hearing when the volume is up and loud.

If you really want to get a better live recording, multi-track it, then mix it more later, will get a much better result, or split your recording sends somehow to get a different mix going into tape...

[pryzm]

Thanks my friends for the replies.

Let me describe the church sound setup as best as i can recall.



Instruments and mic to the mixer as usual



main outs (L and R) - to Power amp (ch 1 and 2 respectively)

From power amp to house speakers.



Monitor outs (L and R) to Power amp (ch 1 and 2 respectively)

Power amp to monitors



RCA to Recorder (Usual Headphones monitoring)


I dont have any capability to multitrack a church service. I dont think that is possible with the set up we have. I would have to get a Roland or Yamaha 16 channel digital mixer/recorder to do so (very expensive - not prepared to invest so heavily as yet).


Any ideas in light of the above information?

thank you very much
God Bless
Gordon

[pryzm]

by the way

when you mention using the efx and AUX are you suggesting i use them as outputs to the recorder from teh mixer? if so what would i have to do to reconfigure the system?

thanks
God bless
Gordon

[mrthenry]

If you have an unused Aux/FX/Mon send you can record a mono mix to tape.
Obviously you will need a 1/4" to RCA adapter and an RCA f to 2 RCA m Y adapter.

After listening to the recording you can make adjustments each time untill eventually you get lucky and capture a good take of a few songs.

When possible listen to the band with no Mains up, Only monitors on. See if you can get the musicians to turn up or down in order to get a good mix without the PA. If some intstuments are louder then they will be turned down in the mains and not make it to the recording. and vice vesa. If everyone performs at the same volume then it will be easier to get a recording as such.

[5454stevef]

I hope i can describe this properly.

I am managing the sound at our church. I am in the process of doing some upgrades. I am having a disgusting experience with the recording and the live sound.

Let me describe the setup. We use a Behringer Europower PMP5000 mixer, a monitor and house speaker amp set up (everything runs in and out of the mixer).

We use guitars, Bass, piano and mics. We also have a set up for playing CD's and Ipods and so on.

My issue is this. If i am mixing the house sound alone without working on a recording i usually get a good house mix. but when i hit record, everything goes wrong. I have a great house mix but the recording is terrible. the guitar or bass or something is always too loud or something just isnt balanced. But when i am mixing for a recording everything sounds fine in the recording but terrible in the house.

I'm not sure what to do about this. Something gets sacrificed.

Can you recommend any equipment or configuration that i can emply that would assist in rectifying this problem?

thanks

I'm sure you know this by now, but this is a problem with no simple work-arounds - mixing for the house, you are balancing a lot of things that are fairly loud to begin with, with some things that would be inaudible without a microphone. So you're mixing the reinforced sound with the direct sound from amps, etc. It's nearly impossible to simply record the house mix and have it sound anything like what you hear in the room; I've experienced this even in large venues where every single thing has a mic in front of it or goes direct, and most of what you hear comes from the PA. Invariably the vocals will be too upfront because there's effectively no direct sound from the singers in the house.

Looking at the info online for this particular board, I can't tell if it has enough auxiliary outs that you wouldn't be using for effects and so on to do a separate stereo mix that way. Even if you have only one unused effects send on each channel, you could improve the situation this way:

Beg, borrow, or steal a small mixer with at least three line level inputs. Since it's for a church, stealing is probably frowned upon. Anyway, you could try this - feed this little mixer with the RCA jacks you are normally recording from. Bring the effects send from the main board into another channel on the outboard mixer and pan it dead center. Use the effects sends on the channels to help balance the mix by augmenting things that may not be very loud in the house mix because they're pretty loud in the room. This usually includes things like electric guitars, horns, etc. This part of the mix will be mono, but if you're mixing the house in stereo (not all that common, but some people do) you'll still get some spread from that. This may be preferable to simply using the effects send for a mono mix if you're doing effects and eq on the house mix. For sure it is simpler than trying to manage two completely separate mixes, especially if a typical performance involves much in the way of fader moves.

A couple of other possible solutions that don't involve multitracking, but might not be any cheaper depending on how many mics and instruments are involved, and will be more difficult for one person to manage adequately:

Use a splitter to split the mic and direct outputs from the stage mics and instruments between the FOH mixer and a separate mixer for recording.
You would then do a completely separate, dedicated mix for the recording in stereo. The mixer for recording doesn't necessarily have to be anything special, just a small PA board will usually work ok. Splitters are not cheap, though, especially if you have a lot of channels.

Or, it may be possible to use the channel inserts to pull "pseudo-direct" outputs off the individual channels without interrupting the signal to the FOH mix. These signals would then go to a separate mixer that would be used for the dedicated recording mix. This usually involves plugging a 1/4" plug into the first detent on the insert jack of each channel. It's a little bit cheesy but I've made it work in the past. Check the board's manual, it may describe how to do this.

Or... and this may be the simplest and most effective solution, get a stereo mic or a pair of matched condensers and record the sound in the room. You might be surprised how good it can sound if you have a good house mix. That way you can concentrate on the job at hand, knowing your efforts will be captured on the recording as well.

Good luck.

Sf

[EC_Beast]

I'm not sure if anyone's asked this, but what's your budget for this "fix"?

I mean, with enough budget you could use a Venue and fix the problem. But I'm quite positive that's not even a laughing joke to you guys at this point. :)

Are you looking to find an option with your current mixing set up, or are you looking for a full swapout? I'm sure a digital board with some pre-fader monitoring would allow you to make a stereo mix to a recorder, or you could even split the signal and send one to a recorder, and one to the FOH...

[grandaddio]

my approach might be the simplest, and most cost effective. Record the room with 2 PZM mikes .... an old trick in ambient (room) recording is to attach the PZM's on each side of a medium such as Plexiglas or for that matter plywood.... an 18" to 24" square is sufficient. Hang this in front of and well above the stage .... or better yet center an above the mix station. The PZM's should be oriented left/right. the feed to the recorder COULD be routed through two channels on the board (if available) and use the inserts on those channels to send directly to the recorder, this would allow the use of the boards trims for level control and if luxury has it, the board will allow for pre/post EQ/fader switches. Headphone monitor your signal from your recorder after you have set the gain stage for the 2 PZM's on your board.

The PZM's will effectively pickup the most subtle of ambient signal and yet can endure and cleanly deliver extremely high SPL.

You and the audience are listening to the end result of FOH, so..... RECORD the ROOM.

[Iesous]

To record live sound is an art in and of itself. To get the mix in the house(PA) and on CD or digtal format is another issue. Have you tried seperate groupings of inputs in the Aux. as a secondary output for recording. Also, have you considered a compressor and noise gate which will help filter unwanted noise? finally you might consider coming directly out of the mixer with the secondary outputs (right below the XLR inputs) to another board or even better a PC with say Guitar tracks, Protools, or another multichannel software that will allow you to record individual signals that can later be remixed and cleaned up? Several solutions, but you have to decide which one is best for your budget and application. Been there done that with our Church. Went with Digital recording of seperate channels into a desktop PC. The house mix is all the sound man has to attend to. The Praise leader can go back later and clean up the sloppy recording and make us sound like HILLSONG!:o

[jbarnosky]

A question and suggestion.

Question: You're running from a powered mixer to power amps, and then to speakers? I thought the point in having a powered mixer... I dunno. I don't use powered mixers much with our church; only for quick, portable gigs like a youth group pool party. Anyway.

Suggestion: Multitrack via the board you have. Use the Line In or Input channels (I don't do it myself, so I'm not sure which ones to use) directly below your XLR inputs with some TRS connectors to do multitrack recording. A couple of USB or Firewire interfaces (even PreSonus Firepods) can be daisy-chained together and run into a computer with multi-tracking software. You can even set up your software on a laptop beside you with the interfaces running into it, let your live mix be your live mix, and look for decent levels on-screen for each channel. In fact, the Firepods might not be a bad place for you to start; as long as each channel has a gain and/or output control, you can make sure you don't peak any channel in the digital recording. Your house sound will still be unaffected.

I'm kind of a novice to recording; I'm using sub outputs on my Behringer board at the church to sub-mix because our budget was low this year and I got an Alesis iO|14 interface, with only four inputs. :( If I had a couple of 8-input interfaces, I could patch cable out of the board and keep each channel separate.

Anyway, that's a way for you to multitrack without buying a whole new mixer for it. Just a thought!