Hey all, so I'm looking for a some advice on compression. The short back story is that I'm slowly taking over the technical direction at our church and frankly I'm having to take a fine tooth comb to everything. I'm currently working on getting a usable, sensible sound system set up so I can start training volunteers how to really run it.
We have a band that I keep on thinking could use compression on a bunch of mics and instruments. Also, we are starting to do a lot more creative theater work at church and this has led to lots of lapel and ear-piece wireless mic usage. So, there is just so much dynamic range going on that I know we have to do something. I know that properly trained singers, musicians and actors can keep there dynamics in check but that's asking way too much from a volunteer group. (Not bashing our talent in any way, it's just the way it is).
So, the question is, what would be the best way to address this? The requirements are that whatever I do will have to be simple for sound techs to be trained on and use, it needs to be rather inexpensive, and it will only be used for live sound. These are the possible scenarios I've come up with.
1. Add a compressor to the main inserts. This would be very simple 'set and forget' if the settings were light. I'm thinking it MIGHT be workable and do enough good to just take off the worst spikes. I could buy a rather decent compressor if just buying one.
2. Add a compressor to sub master inserts. I don't know if our board actually has submaster inserts, and regardless, I've found that submaster busses confuse and frustrate volunteer sound techs a lot. So, the idea of assigning all vocals to a submaster and using compression on it is great in theory but I think it's not a great configuration for volunteers to work with.
3. Add compressors to individual channels that need it, ie lead singer, anyone with a lapel/ear mic, bass, drums. I'd probably need 6 channels in total, so I'd be forced into cheaper compressors. This would also mean that the sound tech would have to insert the compressor on the right channels as needed, something that makes life more complicated for a volunteer sound tech.
4. Just buy 16-20 channels of compressors and leave them on each channel. I'm talking like 4 behringer mdx4600s. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm trying to simplify stuff so that we aren't plugging/unplugging stuff in the sound booth ever.
More than likely we'll be buying a different mixer in about a year as our current one is dying a slow death, but I'm not at all sold on a digital board. I know many/most have a compressor on each channel, but I'm not really sure if I want to unleash volunteer sound techs on a digital board yet. There's something very simple and elegant about a good 2 bus / 4 aux analog mixer that makes training new people very easy.
So, what would you guys do? How important is compression, how difficult is it to get right, much many channels, etc?
We have a band that I keep on thinking could use compression on a bunch of mics and instruments. Also, we are starting to do a lot more creative theater work at church and this has led to lots of lapel and ear-piece wireless mic usage. So, there is just so much dynamic range going on that I know we have to do something. I know that properly trained singers, musicians and actors can keep there dynamics in check but that's asking way too much from a volunteer group. (Not bashing our talent in any way, it's just the way it is).
So, the question is, what would be the best way to address this? The requirements are that whatever I do will have to be simple for sound techs to be trained on and use, it needs to be rather inexpensive, and it will only be used for live sound. These are the possible scenarios I've come up with.
1. Add a compressor to the main inserts. This would be very simple 'set and forget' if the settings were light. I'm thinking it MIGHT be workable and do enough good to just take off the worst spikes. I could buy a rather decent compressor if just buying one.
2. Add a compressor to sub master inserts. I don't know if our board actually has submaster inserts, and regardless, I've found that submaster busses confuse and frustrate volunteer sound techs a lot. So, the idea of assigning all vocals to a submaster and using compression on it is great in theory but I think it's not a great configuration for volunteers to work with.
3. Add compressors to individual channels that need it, ie lead singer, anyone with a lapel/ear mic, bass, drums. I'd probably need 6 channels in total, so I'd be forced into cheaper compressors. This would also mean that the sound tech would have to insert the compressor on the right channels as needed, something that makes life more complicated for a volunteer sound tech.
4. Just buy 16-20 channels of compressors and leave them on each channel. I'm talking like 4 behringer mdx4600s. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm trying to simplify stuff so that we aren't plugging/unplugging stuff in the sound booth ever.
More than likely we'll be buying a different mixer in about a year as our current one is dying a slow death, but I'm not at all sold on a digital board. I know many/most have a compressor on each channel, but I'm not really sure if I want to unleash volunteer sound techs on a digital board yet. There's something very simple and elegant about a good 2 bus / 4 aux analog mixer that makes training new people very easy.
So, what would you guys do? How important is compression, how difficult is it to get right, much many channels, etc?