The SIMPLE Church Live Stream Audio Solution with Kade Young at Churchfront Conference

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0:00 - Introduction and Background
0:32 - The Role of Focus in Church Sound
1:21 - Personal Story: Lessons from Farming
2:00 - The Challenges of Tipping a Ram
3:00 - Differences in Sound Techniques
3:16 - Choosing the Right Live Stream Sound Strategy
4:19 - Prioritizing the In-Room Experience
5:38 - Consistency and Volunteer Challenges in Church Sound
6:24 - Introduction to Church Sound Made Simple
7:05 - Exploring Live Stream Mix Strategies
7:47 - Discovering Similar Strategies in Large Churches
8:33 - Real-Life Comparisons and Choices in Live Streaming
9:15 - The Challenge of a Separate Live Stream Mix
10:40 - How to Set Up a Post-Fader Bus Mix
11:22 - Adjusting Live Stream Mix Settings
12:38 - Enhancing Your Live Stream with Limiters
14:19 - Adding Brilliance with EQ
15:09 - Bringing Life with Reverb, Panning, and Ambience
16:42 - The Importance of Ambient Mics
17:29 - Final Tips for a Dynamic Live Stream Mix
18:14 - Placement and Use of Ambient Mics
19:01 - Additional Tips for Live Stream Optimization
20:54 - Exclusive T-Shirt Giveaway
21:43 - Closing Thoughts and Prayer

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Disclaimer: This video and description contain affiliate links.

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[collabworship]

Loved my time teaching at the Churchfront Conference! Thanks Jake & team! -Kade

[busterfoxx]

One thing that makes a huge difference in quality is having a "silent stage". I do that by eliminating floor wedges and guitar amps with IEMs. I also have electric drums instead of acoustic drums. If you must use guitar amps, have them off stage but just running your guitar signals from your pedals straight to a DI works great. Lastly, the microphones; limit the number of mics on stage and make sure they're all placed well behind the FOH speakers. This not only reduces the risk of feedback, but also the noise in the recording. You can make up for the "loss of ambience" by adding reverb to your mix and also adding "crowd mics" like he suggested.

[zooba_au]

After my megachurch collapsed a decade ago we didn't have enough team to put someone on our "Broadcast" desk, so we went to post fader bus mix. I've stuck with that idea ever since - lockdown just confirmed it. Love that Kade landed on the same setup. It works, and I use/recommend it to every church I work with now.

[davidgekler]

Love this Kade, thanks. As a professional sound engineer I always want to hear the mix return from the Device that is Streaming. So, I always dedicate a channel on the mixer to bring that Stream mix INTO the mixer - not assigned anywhere, but with a simple Pre fade "Solo" one can hear what's going out to the world. If using VMIX or some other streaming software, this also allows the person doing sound mixing to hear the delay and confirm proper delay - when given a post stream monitor spilt off the streaming computer!

[douglsmith]

Thank you for promoting simplicity! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one out there not adding piles of complicated equipment and software that the volunteers can't really handle. When we simplify, we lower the bar of entry so that even more volunteers can serve, learn, and grow. I too use a post-fader bus mix for livestreaming, with the addition of optionally allowing the livestream operator to adjust the mix on that bus using an iPad or app on the livestream computer. I also simplify the video side of the livestream by using just two, fixed-position, 4K cameras fed directly into a computer where a simple click or button press selects from multiple, simulated 1080p camera scenes cut from the larger images—without any external switchers.

[busterfoxx]

Great talk! I enjoyed and learned a whole lot. It was practical and accessible. One point; if you're using IEMs, you'll need a console with many auxiliary channels because you need to set aside 2 for the broadcast mix. Last thing; I'd say use the post fader bus method for recurring live streaming and use the DAW method when you really need super high quality like recording an artist "performing live".

[annasoH]

Good thoughts! Always riding that line between having the best possible outcome and realistic team and training resources.

[lesliecrothers]

Great talk Kade - I'm a fan of post-fade Livestream too - for all the same reasons you highlighted. Aside from good training, getting a good FOH mix is critical. However, one of the biggest - and often ignored and misunderstood - factors in getting that good live mix, is the acoustics of the room. Poor acoustics can skew things badly, and can unknowingly frustrate the progress and development of new volunteers.

[DbiPro]

What church’s need to do is give access to their techs to run virtual sound checks and allow them to tweak everything to a point where you can send that same signal to a stereo aux mix and make sure they’re testing it to leave those settings saved and stored somewhere anyone can go to incase someone touches it and changes it.

[BlackCoinCrypto]

For stream mix we use an unstance use Reaper. Our FOH console is a TF5 with Dante. Most sundays our stream mix comes from FOH, goes to Reaper where i have a couple of compressors to maintain level.
Other Sundays we will do a dedicated mix. May take so long as we do OK more often than we suck then its good.
The chruch sound team is a safe place to make mistakes.

[craigscoble]

Great content, I have learnt a lot from Kade and applying what he recommends always works great. As beginners its difficult to understand the routing. Is there a detailed video on the routing for the X32 in church and live stream, and how its routing from house to stream in details with visuals please

[timchambers]

You didn't number the first few tips: 1) Church community coming together in-person to worship/share/learn/work... together is more important than having a perfect recording.
2) Start with the FOH mix eg. Post-fader mix or a DAW has to start from replicating the FOH mix. Start flat then vary by...[see video above].
3) Stereo mix.
Then the rest of the points you made.

Extra comments: I can watch the audio meter in the streaming software showing the input level during practice & the service (dedicated screen between video operator & audio mixer). Doesn't tell me who is making it peak but helps with general levels.
The frustration 1 is when the worship team doesn't do enough practice so some get louder with confidence, others were great in practice but seem quieter in the service.
Frustration 2 in a small church is I can't isolate my ears from the FOH sound enough when trying to listen to the streaming mix. I wish I had someone in a seperate room watching&listening to the live stream in realtime not ~20sec delay (as it is from OBS to YT to local PC), with remote access to the digital mixer to edit the livestream mix.
YMMV.

[DbiPro]

The live in room is the priority for the sound team. But. If you have someone dedicated to the livestream THAT is the priority for that person. And they have to find the way to make it work with what they have

[jpawluk]

Hey, quick question for whoever is smarter than me (probably all of you). My church is using the Presonus 24R. For live stream I have just been sending Main to my computer via a matrix mix, but just having the main fader up. The reason I chose this was to get more volume out of it easily.

If I went with the post fader technique as is mentioned in the video, how does that work with the room mics? I don't want them in the main mix so that channel is muted in the main mix (and the fader is down), so how do I get any room mics into the stream? If I set them at -10 dB in the mix for the stream won't they still be off since the main mix has them off?

[DbiPro]

It’s been 7 Months and since then I discovered your broadcast mix needs to be different than your post fader mix. Everything except lead vocals and effects needs to be pre fader

Lead and effects need to be leveled to not be too in your face when you use it in the room.

Your device accepting the audio needs to be setup so it’s not clipping and that the input and output are at good levels to send to the software broadcasting your service. And that can’t clip either.

[DbiPro]

Post fader is never fun when engineers are scared of hearing sound. Not many will get that reference.

[Kingdom]

How do I route the board to get the mix bus to come out of X-USB?

[stieleto]

Why is there always a fade between the cameras? Can‘t watch this…

[bobstaurovsky]

99.9% of the churches out there use what I call untrained amateurs even though they claim they have training. The truth is they don’t have a clue on what they are doing !!! And the BIGGEST problem is the Leadership of the church knows everything about sound systems and really know nothing. Everyone one is an expert in sound, how about hiring Real Sound engineers and let them teach you ??? It takes at least 4 years of practice of doing sound just to get your feet wet and another 4 years to have a good understanding of what you are doing, sound engineers need to learn many different ways of making sound design to get the proper results.

[punisher]

Whole bunch of gibberish this guy is saying. The whole video I didn’t learn a damn thing but all these stories he was telling