Small changes might not sound like much, but if you take your time and really listen, you can pull your mix together quickly enough. Don’t do it! The point of tweaking your channel EQs is to get a better mix, a more appropriate sound to sit correctly in the blend, and you simply can’t do that if you aren’t listening to the mix itself.
It may be tempting to pick up those headphones and solo the channels you want to tweak in isolation. You’ll get effective results quickly that way, freeing up your attention for other critical mixing tasks. Whether you use detailed parametric EQs or the in-line knobs on your analog board, your best bet is to isolate just the main frequencies of your source and let everything else take a back seat. However, digging into these elaborate EQs in real time is slow and time consuming.Ĭonsidering the acoustic environment of many churches, the finer adjustments these EQs offer may be downright ineffective.
That’s great if you have time to set everything up in advance, and we’ll go into details about how to use those EQs to their best effect in the section on EQing specific sources. Many modern digital mixing boards give you the same detailed parametric EQ options you’ll find in plug-in processors, opening up endless tone tweaking possibilities. Just be sure to bring that band down to unity gain (0dB) and then cut other frequencies around it when you’re done. Pro Tip: To find the frequency range you want to keep, start by boosting and then sweeping an EQ band to find the frequencies where the source pops out.
Sure, you can get the same effect by boosting multiple bands in proportion, but the process is slower and introduces more noise than simply carving away the unwanted frequencies. Second, by cutting out unwanted frequencies, you end up gaining more control over what’s left, cutting some ranges more than others, while leaving the desirable range intact. It’s not much, but it does add up, especially across larger mixes. The more you raise the gain by boosting EQ bands, the more noise you add to the mix. Each time you amplify signal (increase the gain), you introduce some noise. First, each EQ band is, essentially, a small gain stage. There are two great reasons to cut unwanted frequencies rather than to boost the range you want to keep. Here are a few general tips to keep in mind before you reach for the EQ. With the exception of kick drum, almost no sources benefit from that extreme low end, and rolling it off right from the start is one of the easiest ways to start your mixing on the right foot. If your mixing board includes highpass filters on each input, then you’ll want to use them on most inputs. Pro Tip: Low-end bass buildup is one of the biggest issues in live sound mixing, but it’s an easy problem to solve.
Instead, by isolating the most important frequency ranges of each track, the whole mix can come together like the pieces of a mosaic, creating a beautiful picture from a series of discrete yet complementary parts. That kind of buildup leads to muddy mixes at best and nightmarish feedback at worst. Second, EQ lets you put each input source into its own pocket, reducing the chance of one instrument masking another or causing a buildup around a specific frequency range. Whatever the problem may be, applying a modest amount of equalization will usually help correct the imbalance. Perhaps that acoustic guitar sounds a bit brittle, or that kick drum sounds like it’s made of cardboard. A bit of critical listening to any input is likely to reveal a major flaw or two in the sound. But the real question may be, “How does EQ work?” There are two main ways that EQing will help your live mix.įirst, equalization lets you correct problems and imbalances in individual channels. You’re probably thinking that the answer to this is simple: you EQ to make the mix sound better - obviously. But before we go into the specifics, there are a few things you’ll want to consider. Lucky for you, there are some simple guidelines that can make rescuing your mix simple and painless. This is when inexperienced engineers panic and the congregation is treated to a jarring jumble of sound that’s much less than inspiring. Prep as you may, come Sunday morning, anything can happen, and as the congregation trickles in, that mix you painstakingly crafted during soundcheck may fall flat. Without a doubt, equalizing (EQing for short) the live mix is one of the most stressful parts of running sound in a worship setting.