WHY SUBS ON AN AUX IS A BAD IDEA

Everyone loves low end in their mix, right? That pumping thumping feeling of the kick and bass in your chest; nothing like it! But what’s the best way to manage your subs and what gets sent to them? My answer: it depends!

This video is part of my 10+ hour Live Worship Mixing 101 course, which you can get access to at the link below!

[zaharishtonov]

Why subs on an Aux is a great idea, I should say! In fact it is so great that a whole range of live consoles have a dedicated hardware control from where you could send any instrument that your heart desires to the sub then have a master return for it. It’s all about control and speed. Also having a bit of an overlap where your mains can reproduce some of the low frequencies which the sub might be boosting at the same time is a good thing. Every time you play at a given venue, the number of people will always vary. That will greatly influence the distribution of frequencies throughout the room, including the lows. The more people you have, the more absorption you will get. Relying just on a crossover point and EQ isn’t going to cut it. Or at least you will have to fiddle with every instrument that has lows the minute the conditions change. Having one master sub control solves that problem quickly and effectively. In cinema mixing environment this is called the LFE channel and it’s always dedicate and discrete element that the engineer wants to control. There has been countless times when the existence of a dedicated Sub/C buss on a live mixer has facilitated a mix rather than taken as detrimental.

[sonicman]

Jacking the EQ on each individual channel just to get the live mix subwoofers to sound right is really going to destroy what your recording and / or livestream feeds sound like. No wonder most church livestream feeds sound like crap. Just sayin'...

[christiaanbezuidenhout]

Nowhere you gave any reason as to why subs on an Aux is actually bad.. But yet you're titling your video it? In fact.. You actually give a reason where it can work..

Subs on an Aux has more advantages than anything else. If you're not a fan of it, don't use it, but don't preach to others that it's a bad idea, if you've got no evidence to support that it's actually bad.

[iengineer_]

When I get to be the Engineer in control as far as setting up and mixing, I do either/or. If I do sound for church or a live event and they’re not bothered by low end I will go into sub out to mains. If the people are going to be bothered by low end I tend to ride a aux fader for subs instead. Either way I Eq accordingly and just try to keep things balanced so I won’t get complaints 😂😂😂😂😂✅✅✅✅ Good insight vid keep it coming

[stehfreejesseah]

I personally love a good 160/200 ring from a podium mic in my subs. But that’s just me. 😂

[billwallace]

I can tell your heart is in a good place, but this is setting up some techs for some bad habits. Relying on violent EQ curves to deal with an often poorly set up PA is dangerous ideology. Most places that have been set up years ago have crossovers that are old, and hard to navigate- and they weren't done right. Or things have changed.

I see drastic EQ curves on all sorts of peoples scenes and mixes. STOP IT. Try it flat first. Stop encouraging this madness. Sometimes the subs are put in a place physically that create a disparity with the DELAY of the sources.

Please. Stop saying subs on an aux is bad. Thats irresponsible.

[bobbyp.briggs]

I had to delete my first comment because I realized that you are probably in a 'perfect environment' - good gears, professional musicians, and you probably mix only for the room, etc. The majority of audio engineers do not have the opportunities you have, and so they need to find the fastest possible way to solve problems. One question: Have you mixed with 3 different brands of non-professional subwoofers all for FOH? There are crazy positions that audio engineers find themselves that you may never find yourself in. Look, you use QSC subwoofers; you really do not need lots of low end 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[stevescott]

Being new to this, I am trying to understand the relation between my powered mains and sub's crossover setting and the hi pass setting on the mixer. I'll set my QSC mains and the sub at the same crossover frequency. Does the hi pass filter on the QSC mixer have to be set to the same frequency? Would I need to ever change the hi pass frequency during the performance? What are the ramifications of doing this?