Sound Board Basics: Auxiliary Sends

sound board basics auxiliary sends the next thing that we're going to look at are the auxiliary sends these red dials you see highlighted here now at this point we need to stop for a second and discuss the order in which the dials appear on the board and there's a reason why they're in the order that they are first you have the white dials then you have the red dials then you have the blue dials and then finally you have the black dial then the slider which is a separate issue when you're setting up a channel for the first time the first thing that you want to do is to take the slider and move it up to unity gain that little white line there that's highlighted you also want to take the sub mixes and move them up to unity gain and the mean and move it up to unity gain that way you're going to start hearing something through the main speakers now once you've done all of that then you want to go up to the white dial and adjust it until the sound level is appropriate for that instrument or vocal and once you've done that then you want to move to the red dials and adjust them appropriately for the monitors after you've done that then you want to equalize the channel and at the end if there's anything to be done with the pan you want to do that last and so you can see that there's an order that we move in here we start from the top and move to the bottom for the dials the sliders are a different story those need to be up before you start adjusting the dials but for the dials we start at the top and move downward always in that order why is that well it's because the red dials are affected by the white dials so if I adjust the white dial first and then move to the red dial I'm okay but if I adjust the now first and then adjust the white dial I get into trouble why is that it's because if I move the slider up and then I adjust the red dial and then I adjust the white dial when I adjust the white dial I'm changing both the main volume through the slider and the auxiliary which I can't necessarily hear that's up on the stage and so the white dial effects all of the rest of these things now it's important to know that you start at the top of the board because this is the thing that affects everything else this affects almost everything else this doesn't affect nearly as much as you go down the board you're changing things that have lesser effects and so you want to make sure that you set the white dial first then the red dial then the blue dials it's important to keep that order straight we're now going to talk about the exception to the rule that I just laid out the things start at the top and move to the bottom start with the white then the red and the blue then the black then the faders and you can imagine the signal physically moving through that channel because it literally goes from one control to the other but the exception to the rule are you're after fader auxiliary sends and that's channels five and six on the auxiliary sends so Xillia send five and exhilarating send six aren't where they look to be on the board they're actually down here now that's confusing I know but what that shows you is that five and six for the auxiliary sends are affected by the fader so if you move the fader up they will get louder if you move the fader down they will get quieter so these two right here if you move the fader up they are going to get louder if you move the fader down they are going to get quieter but that is not true for auxilary send one and axillary send two now exhilarate end three and four there's a little button that controls whether they're part of this group or whether they're part of this group so they can be pre fader unaffected by the fader or they can be after fader affected by the fader now what's the point of all of that the point is is that there are times when your auxiliaries ends you want them to be independent of the fader and that's these ones up here but there are times when you want them to be affected by the fader what are examples of times when you want for the auxilary sentence to be unaffected by the fader well let's say that you set up your channel and you've got your game set and then you set the monitor mix for the people on stage to hear what's happening and then you turn up your slider and you don't want for the stage level for the band to get louder when you do that because if the the guitarist is playing something that's just too quiet and you want to turn up the sound level a bit then you're gonna take your fader and just raise it up a little bit more than you would normally have it you might want to turn that down again in a minute you want to make a small adjustment but if you do that and the fader also effects your monitor channel and you raise the level on the stage you might be causing feedback without realizing it you want for that level on the stage to be constant whatever happens with the fader because you want the ability to adjust the sound the the audience here is slightly up or down without risking feedback that's why you want anything that goes to the stage to be pre fader unaffected by the fader or any changes that you may to the fader so if the band isn't playing but they're tuning their instruments and they need to hear what's happening on stage and you have the fader all the way to the bat all the way to the bottom they will still be able to hear the monitors and be able to tune themselves if the fader is up it's not going to blast the sound out of the monitors because this here doesn't affect this here well what are examples of times when you would want for the slider to affect what's happening on the auxiliary sentence for our hearing assist system we want for that to be controlled by the fader because if something is too quiet to be heard through the main speakers it's probably also going to be too quiet to be heard in the hearing assist system and so we want for when someone turns the fader up a little bit for that to balance not only the sound heard through the main speakers but also the sound heard through the auxiliary sends that are after fader so there's two different types of signals that you want to send through your auxiliary sends pre fader unaffected and after fader affected and you need to think through and just logically determine for yourself if I move up the fader is this a channel that I do want to have that as an effect or that I don't want to have that as an effect and mostly it's about whether or not that's a monitor channel or something going to something that the the congregation or the audience is going to hear either the hearing assist system or a recording that you might make different ways in which you want to send the signal somewhere where it's going to be heard by the end user of that sound the audience okay now we've determined whether our auxiliary send channels are to be pre fader or after fader and that's an important thing to do when we're setting up our chain but how do we actually go about adjusting and listening to our channels once we've got them set up as I've said before and we'll probably say many more times again the first thing to be done is to set the gain on the trim and we do that by bringing the slider up to where it ought to be on the mains the subs and that particular channel we adjust the white dial and then when you're setting your gain it's possible to turn down the slider to zero and adjust the dial separately that's not necessarily what we want to do but if this is a pre fader auxilary send then it doesn't actually need for the slider to be up you can turn the main speakers off for that particular channel and give the band only the stage level so that they can hear just that but the thing is that what you hear when you're on stage is a blend of both your main speakers and your monitor speakers so if you turn the faders all the way down and then set your monitors you might be giving them more sound than they actually need because for some musicians who are well-trained and can listen very carefully they don't actually need to be in the monitors and the less we can put them in the monitors the better I'll be explaining more about that in a minute but the sound comes in from the back of the board through the input it comes to the auxiliary dial and then goes over to the main auxiliary send and out to the stage and so on this auxiliary Channel which for us is number auxilary channel number two you may have several dials that you've adjusted for all of the various musicians and singers who are on that particular channel and so you adjust each of them appropriately and then all of them together are sent out to the main and the main goes out here how can you hear what happening there how can you adjust that appropriately there are two sources of information available to you the first is the solo button for the auxiliary send channel if nothing is selected in terms of the solos down here then pushing that button is going to give you the opportunity to hear exactly what's happening for that monitor send the other source of information that you have is talking with the people on the stage and so you want to both ask the people on stage do you hear clearly enough and listen for yourself as to what is being sent to them but even if you're listening to the solo button you're not hearing exactly what they hear you're what's hearing what's being delivered to them through the monitors and what they're hearing is a blend of what they're hearing through the main speakers and what they're hearing through the monitor speakers and if you have the sliders up on the channel and what they're hearing of themselves through the main speakers is sufficient for them to be able to perform you don't need to add anything to them in order for them to hear generally what happens is you've got your drums which if there are acoustic drums that their sound level is probably going to be the loudest thing on stage and so what you want to do is balance the bass guitar with the drums and usually that's done with an amplifier under the bassist control on the stage and then you get a feed out of that bass amplifier that comes to the board and that's what you give to the audience the congregation and those two need to be in balance then you've also got an electric guitar player and they've got their own amp and they've got it balanced on stage and so those are three instruments that are able to balance themselves fairly easily just with what they've got on the stage and so when you're using monitors what you're essentially doing is putting the rest of the instruments on an equal footing so your acoustic guitar player may not have their own amplifier they may just run directly into the board and so the monitor speakers allow for the acoustic guitar to get up to the level of the rest of the instruments or if the stage is very large maybe the drums and the the bass guitar and the electric guitar are just too far away from where the singers and the acoustic guitar player are for them to be able to hear clearly and they need to be in the monitors just so that the stage level is balanced all the way around the stage and then you've got your background vocalists who also need to be able to hear themselves a little bit if the sound level on the stage is low enough that they can just hear themselves singing acoustically coming out of their own mouths or the person next to them then they don't need to be in the monitors but if the stage level is loud enough that they can't hear themselves without amplification then you may need to put them into the monitors a good practice is to turn all of the monitor levels down to zero and then asked a band what they need to hear that way you're not putting information into their ears that doesn't need to be there if they can hear one another clearly enough on stage without any amplification that is better than just blindly putting stuff into the monitors that's what we want to do as a little sound as possible and as much as possible using the natural sound that they hear between one another on stage and the sound coming out of the main speakers and only augment that as little as possible with the monitor speakers because if one instrument asks for themselves to be turned up louder than they actually need to be then everybody else needs to be turned up louder to compensate you want that level as low as possible and one of my pet peeves is that background singers believe that they need to hear themselves very very clearly and so they ask for themselves to be turned up which means the lead vocals need to be turned up which means acoustic guitar needs to be turned up and everything goes from that if you can keep those monitor levels low it's gonna be a cleaner Kent sound coming off the stage less risk of feedback and a more pleasant experience ultimately for the musicians who aren't being blasted by ridiculous levels of sound now some vocalists do need to hear themselves either because they're inexperienced or because they're being drowned out by other instruments so it's not as simple as the thing that's to say you know this group of musicians never needs to hear themselves and this group does but there are certain patterns that we see and certain people who have a tendency to ask for themselves to be turned up when they probably don't if you as a background vocalist need to be turned up you need to learn learn to work on your listening skills not be turned up in the monitor but in the in the heat of the moment on a Sunday morning that's not really an option so sometimes you just need to turn people up but do all of you can do all that you can to keep those monitor levels low and it will really help the music one of the things that's difficult about running a soundboard is communicating with the people on stage and there's no place where it's more important than one setting your auxiliary sends you have control over the monitors you are the one who sets that level but you can't really hear what's going on in the stage even if you go up and listen for yourself you don't know what that person wants to or needs to hear maybe they are an incredible musician who can hear very clearly even if there's no monitors maybe they are just a beginner or not used to using technology to perform and they're insecure or inexperienced and don't know what's going on misunderstandings happen very frequently and easily between sound Tech's and people who are on the stage one of the important things to remember when you've only got 10 minutes before the service starts and you've got to get your job done is that you need to be delicate and understanding with the people on stage when a monitor is set inappropriately it makes it very difficult for the person on the stage to hear what they need to hear to be able to perform appropriately and you are in a position to give them an experience that fosters worship instead of obstructing worship and so their musical performance is reliant upon hearing clearly what they need and that varies from musician to musician what one music musician needs is different from what another musician needs you need to understand the people as well as the technology to do this job effectively talk communicate well make sure that you do your job quickly and effectively so that you can get through all that you need to get through to set the board up properly before you get to crunch time it seems like everything that I said on every slide of this presentation corrected or contradicted what came on the slide before there are competing interests here when you're setting monitors there's your perspective there's the stage perspective you need to understand both of those and how they work together to understand what it is that you need to do to accomplish your job effectively be patient talk to people communicate well and things will go well for you thank you

Channel: Andrew Bellous

Views: 54,656

Keywords: church, sound, reinforcement, church sound, church soundboard, soundboard, mackie, sr 24, sr 24-4, run sound, operate soundboard, sr 32, worship

Id: LrDwzuYLrqA

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2016