Getting a Better FOH Mix
Here’s the thing about mixing in churches. Sometimes there’s a multitude of volunteers that go before you from week to week and eventually over the course of time, the show file gets mangled into a million pieces, with sounds resembling that of a saber-tooth tiger ripping into a garden gnome named Frank. Getting a better FOH mix can be tricky sometimes, especially when you factor the peanut gallery of congregants that like to voice their opinion as they make a b-line back to the sound booth. Let’s talk about it.
1: Tune The Room
This may be the most important advice anyone will ever give you. Getting your room tuned is detrimental to a good mix. I really don’t care if your line-arrays are $2000 per box, it can still sound bad. Actually, if not tuned, it can sound downright dreadful. Here’s the thing, working with a room that’s not tuned properly or at all for that matter, will make you work harder to eliminate EQ issues that are actually the room it’s self. This will have you compensating for things that you really shouldn’t have to bother with. So if you want a better FOH mix, I’d definitely recommend starting there. There’s a ton of benefits to it, EQ just being one of them.
2: Close Your Eyes
Ok, maybe you DO need to pay attention to what’s going on. However, if I’m having issues in a specific spot, particularly with volume of any given instrument, this helps so much. For whatever reason, your brain will allow your ears to focus more without being able to see the room. I know that I sound absolutely ridiculous, but I’m a firm believer in just closing my eyes and listening in order to get a better FOH mix.
3: Start Over
This is controversial to some techs and common place for other techs. I love nothing more than a blank mix. The “get it right at the source” mentality really goes a long way, sonically speaking. Start with your drums and bass, work the rest of the instruments in. Finally, move to vocals. No EQ, no reverb, no compression. Starting over is a great way to find trouble areas with instruments or even vocals. We’re getting closer to a better FOH mix for sure.
4: Work Everything Else Back In
Now that we got ourselves a fresh start, let’s start with just cutting the 0-100Hz range and the 6-16Hz ranges before we start tweaking any mid range frequencies. Having a system like this in place keeps you from over-doing it too quickly. Work any compression or other dynamic effects in next. Only when you feel 96% about your mix should you start working in the delay and reverb effects in. This will get you so much closer to a better FOH mix.
5: Get Your Subs Setup Right
This one is a doozy. Your subs need to be installed and setup properly. I’m not going to get into the debate of aux-fed subs vs house-fed subs. The fact that the internet has so many debates on that blows my mind, people have too much time on their hands. What I mean is the placement, cross-over, and delay.
The Placement
QSC has a great article on this if you want to get scientific with it. My general rule of thumb is to be as close to parallel with the house speakers as I can. Whether that’s on the ground or flown, check your depth to assure everything is sonically pleasing.
The Cross-Over
Back in the analog days of sound, we usually had to have a separate rack piece to ensure that our subs only received the sub-friendly frequencies. In modern days, something like a dbx DriveRack Venue 360 or even your console it’s self can take care of this for you. Nothing sounds worse than mid rand hitting a sub.
The Delay
This one gets overlooked so often and plays in hand with what I mentioned in the Placement section. Pre-Sonus puts this in a better word salad than I can so here’s a direct quote. “Measure the distance in feet from the overlap area to each speaker location. Subtract the smaller distance (the distance to the subwoofer) from the larger distance (the distance to the full-range loudspeaker). Divide that number by 1.13 and apply that delay value to the subwoofer”. You won’t believe how much difference that properly timed subs make. You can set this with either a dbx DriveRack Venue 360 or your FOH console. Every console is different though, so you just need to find out what works for you.
Know The Rules, Break The Rules
The benefit to knowing WHY you do something is knowing WHY you don’t want to do something. This is simply the way that I do things, and it may not work for you specifically. I do know that getting a better FOH mix can be stressful under certain circumstances. Your system not being setup properly is a big cause of the after-church migraines. Obviously, there are other ways to get a better FOH mix, but these are just a few of my favorites. Oh yeah, don’t go changing things like your speaker delay, placement, and tuning without first talking to who’s over that department. It’s also worth noting that most of this article is pre-rehearsal prep work and shouldn’t be attempted when you’re sharing time with others.
