Ever find yourself rebalancing the band's volume levels more than expected? There are several reasons for this, and a few of them might surprise you.
Groups of Three
For every three channels at the same volume, there's an increase of roughly 3 dB in the combined volume. How many people only mix three channels? I mix twenty-two channels for our band and enough channel volumes are close enough to result in a 6 dB gain.
Effects Affect Volume
An effect modifies a sound and it's mostly in an additive nature such as reverb and distortion. Distortion's a great method for blending bass guitar into a contemporary music mix. Adding distortion creates a new range of audio frequencies. The amount of distortion applied to the bass can result in the need to reduce the channel's volume.
Compression can also raise an object's volume. Compression is usually used for volume limiting such as with a vocalist. However, the use of parallel compression can increase volume.
I use parallel compression on my snare drum mix. The dry channel gets the standard EQ work and then I duplicate the channel and compress the heck out of the copy. The result of mixing the wet and dry channels is more snap in my snare but as a side effect, it's a little louder. I can reduce the volume and keep the added snap.
A band that only performs one song for a warm-up before the service needs to extend that to two or three.
Singing Cold
A short sound check is bad for vocalists and bad for you. Singers need to warm up their voice before full-on singing to both prolong their ability to sing and sing at the right volume. Without warming up, the untrained vocalist might think they're saving their voice for the service by singing quieter but, if it's the only time to set gain and volume levels, they're doing a disservice to the tech and the band.
I don't perform precise volume mixing during the first song for this very reason. I'm not going to waste my time on vocal levels that will increase in ten minutes.
A band that only performs one song for a warm-up before the service needs to extend that to two or three. If this isn't possible, suggest to the worship leader the vocalists get together before the sound check to warm up. I've seen this before and it's quite effective.
It's Only Practice
This one drives me nuts. The sound check is over, gains are set, and the overall mix is dialed in. Then, the service starts and one channel volume is way off. The instrumentalist, perhaps the drummer or guitarist, decides now is the time to drum louder or strum harder.
This can be handled in two ways. First, with musicians known to do this, set their channel volume higher during practice and pull it back for the service. When they do rev it up, the mix is closer to correct.
Second, work with the worship leader so they teach the musicians the importance of playing at the same volume. If this doesn't work, see the first method.
Don't use compression as a fallback position. It's tempting to automate volume control by using high-ratio compression to keep their volume as before. A side-effect of heavy compression is the squishing of frequencies so the channel sounds different.
Temporary Threshold Shift
Ear fatigue can make us believe we need to boost the volume. Let's say you've been mixing a loud band for thirty minutes. You'll experience Temporary Threshold Shift (TTS) which is an upward shift in the threshold of human hearing. In not-so-geek speak, what was first perceived as loud becomes “normal.”
The problem with TTS is frequencies are perceived at different volumes than when you first started mixing. What once popped out in the mix is less defined. Therefore, out of natural instinct, you want to make those highs and lows pop so you boost their dB's even more. Looking at the Equal-Loudness Curve, you could be pushing some seriously high decibels and not only increasing fatigue but you're destroying the mix.
Think of it like this, what you mixed at the beginning will start to sound different as your ears fatigue. You want to tweak the mix but I caution you, “Please step away from the mixer“.
It's easy to mix at a louder volume than intended, for a variety of reasons. For some reasons, it's no surprise, but for others, it explains why we spend extra time adjusting channel faders throughout the mix process. In the case of TTS, touching the fader might be the last thing we need to do.
