Hybrid Mix
Worship Tech
The idea behind the hybrid template.
The strategy is to surgically remove commonly offensive frequencies between each particular channel/source to bring clarity across your mixer. Other tenants of this template include:
- judicious EQ boosting
- non-evasive gating
- MINIMAL to no compression – too much can affect musicians
- tasteful, minimal FX
Though it’s not practical to get the BEST mix for multiple platforms with one digital console, you can get a very solid one. This is because each digital mixer only has one “channel strip” of settings per instrument or vocal. You can’t have a different EQ on your pastor’s mic for the house vs. the livestream, not with just one board.
The ONLY solution to this is that your settings need to sound as good and balanced as they can be.
What that means is that in order to improve your audio productions across the board, we must make that one channel strip the best it can be – and that’s why we call it the “hybrid” template.
The Livestream
The sends for the livestream mix (set up as an aux/monitor mix) in the hybrid template run in a “post-fader” configuration. This means anytime you make an adjustment for your house mix, the same adjustment is also made in your livestream – simplifying mix adjustments for a a church with only one (or no) audio engineer.
Again, you’re not gonna get the ABSOLUTE BEST livestream mix this way. However, getting your channels in good shape will still improve your broadcast dramatically.
Your Monitor Mixes
For those of you using either wedges or in ears, we’ve already carved out some spots for that. No need to set those up completely, though you may have to do some slight customization. We left all the sends to monitor mixes down, as your musicians will want to customize all that to their likings.
As of personal monitoring systems, we didn’t try to predict what you would want on what channel – you’ll want to set those up.
“But how does my room & PA factor into this template?”
Answer: it doesn’t. Allow me to explain.
All rooms sound different. No two rooms sound alike. Sound bounces of of the reflective surfaces and creates peaks and nodes (boosts and cuts) in certain frequencies based on the size of the room. However, this can be corrected via PA or room tuning.
Room Tuning
Room tuning fixes problems in your room and corrects them at the PA level. Or possibly even the master EQ level on your board. A lot of people make the mistake of reacting to room problems with their individual channel settings, making mixing much harder. When you get your room right, mixing is much easer.
And generally accepted mixing principles used in our mixing solutions make a lot more sense and create better translation.
If you sound worse with our template, it could be you have a room issue. Not ideal, but our template may help you write off your mix as your problem. That being said, we rarely find our clients report this to us. Don’t overthink this part; your system is probably fine and you just need a better optimized mix.