Four steps to achieving a consistently high-quality live stream mix without the need for an additional sound engineer or mixing console.

The livestream audio at LifeMission Church in Olathe, Kansas is getting so good that people are taking notice. Caden Van Dorn is a production tech at Life Mission. He’s an audio specialist who is being asked to help other churches around Kansas City figure out their live stream audio issues for a small fee. In this podcast Life Mission AVL Director Joseph Cottle and Van Dorn sit down to explain what they’re doing for the live stream that makes their audio so enviable.

Cottle and Van Dorn are good friends and have been working together for about two years now.

They explain that their live stream audio wasn’t always so good and it’s been a process bringing the quality to where it is now. And while they switched audio desks last summer, Van Dorn says that’s not the reason. “No, I don't think the console has made that big of a difference because I'm not really doing much on-board processing. All of the processing on the live stream is being done outboard through
Waves,” he explains.

Cottle says, “What I really love about our mix for the live stream is it sounds very live. Sometimes mixes can sound so dry and that's what makes them pretty meh and is a dead giveaway that it's a set and forget mix is just not good. So how are you using the little bit of processing after what Russell's doing? How are you using that to create that live feel?”

Russell is the church’s contract sound engineer and Van Dorn says that live feel has several aspects to it. “Okay, so what this actually comes down to that live feel, the difference between a studio album, let's just take this to an album away from livestream or to a post produced album,” he explains. “You can tell when something is live because not everything is perfect. Well, depending on what you listen to, not everything is perfectly tight all the time and there's that natural organic feel to everything. But also you can hear the room and that translates very well to giving the feel of this is live when you're listening to something on Spotify.”

As far as mics go, they have relatively inexpensive mics like Behringer condenser mics on mic stands on either side of the stage front and one next to the drum cage as well as shotgun mics hung near the PA but pointed at the crowd. Funny story. Cottle says those mics just appeared out of nowhere. “We were up moving light fixtures earlier this year and we look up, we're on this big extended boom. And then we're like, holy crap, somebody put shotgun mics up here. We had no idea. These have just been here the whole time for years...they’ve just been chilling.”

Van Dorn says they were an important piece of the puzzle. “And those, since they're so close to the PA, they contribute. They bring a very mids-forward sound. And so those mics contribute a lot of weight to the feel of the live stream, he explains. “Those [the other] mics contribute a very bright sound and so when you marry that bright sound that can really deliver a lot of that live feel with the weight that you get from the mids-forward, shotgun mics that are next to the PA - It really helps glue the entire thing together.”

Van Dorn goes on to explain what he calls the Four Pillars of a Successful Stream Mix:

1.) Proper Gain Staging

“You need some way to make sure one that you can keep your audio from distorting, but also important, make sure that your limiters, what's being limited on your limiter translates to what's happening on your live stream mix.”

2.) Having an Accurate Room

“Having a room that reflects what the livestream mix is going to be hearing. So, every church that has a soundboard has speakers that are of varying levels of quality. And so, they will either more accurately or less accurately represent the sound that is coming through that system.”

3.) Hire a Good Engineer (if you have to)

“For smaller churches, you might think, ‘Hey, well I can't really swing a contract engineer.’ That's a very valid concern,” Cottle says. “I would come back at that though and say that if you have somebody who's attending your church that is a competent audio engineer and maybe they're volunteering once a month. You'd be surprised at how many people would show up every week if you offer them a hundred, 250 bucks a week to show up.”

Van Dorn says the goal is consistency. “If you train your audio engineers up to offer something consistent that feels the same every time, that makes it worlds easier to set and forget a live stream mix because you know what to expect. If you have the same level and consistency of product being offered, it's so much easier to make these global decisions about your livestream mix and what's coming into it and feel confident that it will be well represented because your engineer knows how to do the same thing every week.”

4.) Monitor Your LUFS

“This is how all major streaming platforms determine, this is how they gauge their audio. So, every streaming platform shoots for a target loudness called LUFS. Yes, this is a measurement,” Van Dorn explains. “In Waves, there is this other plugin called WLM meter, and it allows you to basically set it and then run it for a few minutes. Over the course of time, it will take the average level of the signal coming in and it will tell you what the LUFS value is. Keeping that high average is very important to having a consistent listening experience so that the big parts sound just as loud as the quiet moments ideally.”

Van Dorn and Cottle’s’ podcast conversation lasts 45 minutes and is full of very specific details on all of these ideas for getting and keeping live stream audio high quality and consistent.