BEST LIVE SOUND MIXING TRAINING HOW TO

These tools are presented in a manner that places a high value on the creative and technical influences they impose on the individual sounds, as well as the control they can offer for multiple sounds, channels, and tracks. The course emphasizes instrument sounds, microphones, equalization, and dynamics processing. You will study, evaluate, and compare several different live and studio recordings in order to establish a point of reference for your own mix choices.

BEST LIVE SOUND MIXING TRAINING HOW TO

This course explores the acoustical, musical, and technical aspects of the live performance, in order to learn how to present the best possible sound to the audience.

Music Composition for Film, TV, and Games.

Electronic Music Production and Sound Design.

Interdisciplinary Music Studies (Create Your Own Major).

Music Theory, Harmony, and Ear Training.

If IвЂ™m looking at the mixer, or the compressor, and nothing is clipping, the audio can still be distorted if the person speaking is shouting to an audience, cheering a goal, or simply beyond the audio input levels at any stage of the process. No matter how I adjust it later, if it clips at an earlier stage in the audio chain, no amount of lowering the audio level at later stages will fix the clipped audio it just makes it quieter. The operator was confused because the output level was being properly handled-it was low, not in the red-yet it still sounded bad.Д«ut the operator forgot that audio clipping can happen at the input of the mixer (input trim) or even at the input of the wireless transmitter, if there is one. However, IвЂ™ve heard clipping audio even when the faders on the mixer were not up that high and the output of the mixer was going into a compressor. Although musicians can use clipping differently to create specific audio effects for instruments or voices, that's not what weвЂ™re after here.Д¬lipping is to be avoided as much as possible. This digital clipping, in most cases, sounds awful for our uses. What these limiters and compressors do is keep the loudest part of our audio from hitting the digital zero-where it clips and creates a вЂњsquare wave,вЂќ as opposed to a smooth sine wave. There are even combination limiter/compressors.ДЇigure 3.В Some of the many ways a limiter/compressor can be set And, as it gets louder, the compression level can be set to increase, until it has the most compression at the loudest point. For instance, something quieter can have less compression.

While this achieves the purpose of not allowing the analog audio to clip before being digitized, it can sound strange when audio has normal dynamics one moment and suddenly doesnвЂ™t the next.ДЄ compressor, however, can vary its limiting effects on a curve depending on how loud something is ( Figure 3, below). Usually, I can set where that threshold is, and thatвЂ™s pretty much it. A limiter, like a limit, means вЂњNo more than this.вЂќ It works to stop the audio from getting any louder than a given threshold. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, the two are not the same thing. But what helps even out all these levels after the mixer are the limiters and compressors. Perhaps there are submix groupings (all the stage mics, versus all the floor mics), and then there are the master faders. Then I have the channel fader to bring up quieter parts of the discussion and bring down the loud parts. I need to be aware that live events will have much more dramatic audio than, say, a low-key corporate webcast, and adjust my levels accordingly. If IвЂ™m doing sports, having the engineer set a level while saying, вЂњHello, hello, 1, 2, 3, 4вЂќ at a conversational tone is nothing like the level at which the announcer will be shouting during a fantastic play.

They need to act like it's the actual event and speak, sing, play, shout, at that same level.ДЇigure 2.В Four of the main ways to adjust audio levels on a mixer

If my mixer has the ability to solo a channel, IвЂ™ll use that and have my subjects speak at вЂњprogram levelвЂќ while I adjust the input trim. With upward of four places I can adjust a single microphoneвЂ™s audio, it's easy to get lost. The same goes for the audio mixer ( Figure 2, below). That means IвЂ™ve mastered the input trim on the microphone IвЂ™m using-especially those on wireless transmitters-and set it so itвЂ™s not so loud that the audio clips, and not too quiet that it forces me to increase gain, producing additional hiss. When it comes to live audio for streaming ( Figure 1, below), there are a few additional wrinkles to consider that donвЂ™t come into play with audio recording when you arenвЂ™t streaming live.ДЇigure 1.В It takes a team to live stream, from producers, video, audio, lighting. In 2014, I made a presentation at Streaming Media West covering all the various ways an вЂњ Audio Mixing NinjaвЂќ gets the best audio possible.

Best live sound mixing training