Audio Tips
One of the most challenging aspects of streaming a worship service is audio. The Internet compresses the sound in such a way that the experience is always worse than what you would hear in person. Refining sound quality usually requires an experienced audio engineer, but there are some basic things you can do to improve your sound immediately.
Keep in mind that the sound you are hearing in the sanctuary will not be the sound you hear over the Internet. If the sound quality online is poor even though you have switched to a digital audio solution (check out the basic on our Getting Started page), you can try checking the following items:
“Gain” structure: Setting gain structure takes some work, but with some basic steps to reset it, you can make a huge difference. Some choose to do a 0 dB approach by setting all of the volume sliders to unity and then setting the gain from there. However, it is more effective - and proper - to set it by focusing on the gain properly first. Here are a couple of links that may help you:
Mixing Live Music - https://youtu.be/PA0kzFmplMg
Worship Music Mixing Techniques - https://youtu.be/9qjj54DJ5qg
Microphone placement: Make sure that microphones are placed 6-12 inches or 15-30 centimeters from the sound source.
Balance: You want to set the volume of each channel so that voices and instruments are not competing with each other. You may want to slightly pan singers and instruments to the left and right side, producing a surround sound effect.
If you are using Zoom as your delivery method, consider turning off the noise reduction and turning on Original Sound, which optimizes the compression to preserve as much of the original sound as possible.
Hopefully these tips will provide a much better quality sound for your service. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us at Genki Today.