When it comes to modern audio consoles that are available to those of us in ministry, one of the overarching observations is just how capable they have become. The competitive landscape with audio manufacturers is incredibly tight—and all of us emerge victorious as a result.
Back in the day of analog desks, the core elements considered when shopping for a desk were channel count, number and type of busses, number and type of EQ bands, and the quality of the mic pres. Today though, the console manufacturers don’t even compete here--they start here as a matter of course and they compete in other areas of capability that give us stuff that we only dreamed of a few years ago.
Just about every console today provides gates, comps, multiple bands of parametric EQ, and onboard effects, and they are doing it per channel and, in many cases, per bus. And that’s not all. Onboard effects used to be an internal spring reverb or plate reverb, but now we have multiple choices of reverbs. And Delays. And hardware emulations. I find it amazing that even multiband compression is available on consoles that cost just a few thousand dollars.
Ultimately, for not much money, one can get a digital desk that has an incredible channel count, a number of highly flexible busses, a large amount of I/O (with good pre's) and more processing capability than many of the older desks could have ever provided. It's very interesting to watch these companies work so hard to keep up with each other.
But here is an interesting question to ponder: Are those of us engaged in the world of church production keeping up with the manufacturers? I’ve had the privilege of working with a fair number of church organizations around the country and I have to say that overall, as a community, I don't think we are doing a great job of staying on top of the bubble. Yes, there are a lot of churches that have current technology and there are a lot of churches that are undergoing upgrades, but that’s only part of the equation. There is an old saying that goes like this: “What you don’t know can't hurt you,” which I would view as a dubious claim. However, I think it's fair to rearrange it and suggest that what you don’t know can't help you. This applies directly to the knowledge we have regarding our tools and, in this discussion, specifically your audio console.
Why go deeper with your desk?
As a community, I don't believe we are overly successful in using our equipment to its fullest potential. We need to do better, and for multiple reasons.
When this type of conversation comes up, the first thought that generally comes to most minds is financial stewardship, which I agree is a valid consideration. We have been entrusted with God's resources to fulfill a specific purpose within our ministries. And that is very true. If we don't fully understand and leverage the technological capabilities of what has been provided to us, then we are effectively leaving money on the table from a stewardship perspective. Nobody wants to do that.
However, financial stewardship is only one aspect to consider, and maybe it's not the most important one. Think about it this way: Every week our churches have a group of talented individuals (including you techies) that come together as a body to worship, create, lead and minister to those that God puts in our path. While God has provided us the finances to fuel this work, more importantly, He has given us the talents and desire to do so. That is a very personal gifting. It is something that He specifically put in each of us according to His desire. Taking the time to engage more fully with our technology and understand its capability makes us better in our craft. Time spent here is an investment in ourselves and it allows us to use our talents to engage others more effectively. It allows us to better minister. It allows us to better create. In Genesis 1, scripture tells us that God created us in His own image, and if there is an attribute of God that impresses me the most, it's that He is an artist and that He delights in our creativity, especially if we are using it to reach others. Consider the work that it takes to understand your console as personal stewardship of what God has gifted and created within you.
How to go deeper with your desk
So how do we consider this with respect to audio consoles? Let's take a more practical look. There are numerous nuanced capabilities on a modern console, and any one of them can help you through a tough situation, as long as you know about it. Here are three capabilities that I generally see underutilized--or that are even unknown to many operators serving in our churches. They are ….
Multiband Compression – Multiband compression, in my experience, is one of the most useful tools for mixing audio in the production world. Yet, it's probably the one feature that I see on digital consoles that people most often don’t know about or know how to use. For those unfamiliar with this concept, multiband compressors allow you to simultaneously apply different amounts of compression to different frequency bands of the same signal. For instance, using this type of compressor would allow you to use one band to limit the high frequency harshness of a vocal when it gets too loud, while at the same time using another band to bring up the lower frequency warmth when it gets too quiet. Both of which could be happening simultaneously. I recently helped out a new-to-me church by mixing a set of services for which they were struggling to find coverage. During the mid-week rehearsal, while working with a vocalist who was presenting balance issues, I pulled up an advanced processing page on the desk to insert a multiband compressor. Upon seeing this the technical director, who had been watching, stopped me to ask what it was we were looking at. As it turns out, the church hadn't known about that feature set and had been running their desk without the benefit of things like multiband compression, dynamic EQ, etc. It was neat to see everyone get so excited about this revelation and the set of tools that they didn’t know they had. The very next week their teams were playing around with it, investing in the skills God gave them.
Side Chaining – Assigning the side chain of a gate or compressor to another source is a capability that seems to get lost in the mix (pun intended.) Side chain assignment allows you to drive a processor using the input signal of another source. This can come in very handy when instruments are competing for the same sonic space or for dealing with bleed. One area where I have found this to be very effective is when dealing with drums that bleed into other stage mics such as a choir, etc. In this case putting a compressor on the choir mics and assigning the sidechain to the snare mic will cause the choir mics to be pulled back every time the snare hits, hence, reducing the effects of the snare bleed.
Bus/Group Compression – Many consoles come with some form of bus/group compression, and quite a number of them have specific bus compression emulations for that task. Many operators know about using compression to control the dynamic range of individual inputs, but most don't know or consider that their desks allow them to do the same on their main bus or subgroups. This can help with controlling dynamic range of an output after your inputs have been stacked together. In addition, many times bus compression will bring a tighter cohesion to your mix elements. Wanna get crazy? Some desks will allow for multiband compression on your mix busses. Try it, it’s fun.
In concluding, it's important to point out that your specific console may or may not support some of these features, and to be honest, whether or not it does really isn't that important. Rather, what is important is that we as operators know what it is that they do support so that we can make the best use of them. Doing so not only allows us to better steward the resources that we have been given, but it also allows us to grow in our personal giftedness, which is something worth getting excited about.
