As someone with beginner/intermediate experience in a Worship setting - CCM music with [typically] 2 keyboards, one bass, one Acoustic Guitar and Roland E-Drums Plus 3 vocalists, using an SQ-6… (running FOH as main LR mix, plus broadcast mix (live))…
What is a feature of the SQ that we may not know about or that you would suggest using to enhance our experience or outcome? Maybe this is an “Aha!” feature that you found that opened up new possibilities for you.
I know I’m not telling you all about our current SQ setup - please ask for pertinent information.
Dave
We are using reverb, delay, and (occasionally) chorus. For those effects, do you have favorites for certain instruments/vocals that are built in (not additional cost)? Or some that are “definitely worth the extra cost”?
Also, if you have creative ways of using effects that would be beneficial to share, I’d be interested in hearing about those… One thing I heard about recently (but haven’t gotten to try it) is sending the delay output into a reverb to make it blend better. I don’t know if there’s a way to order/reorder effects on the SQ.
From what I know of the Automixer, it’s not something that would be beneficial in our setting. We very, very rarely have multiple people speaking. 99.5% of the time it is just one person. If you think I might be misunderstanding or underestimating what the AMM can do, please let me know.
Dave
I was watching a video today (can’t remember whether it was an SQ or a QU now) where they were doing just that - cascading a delay FX with a reverb FX. I have shutdown my laptop for the day. I will see if I can track down the video I watched tomorrow and post a link for you.
Our guitarists and keyboard players come with their own digital effects peddles! We tend to use our SQ effects on the vocals and spoken word. We invested in the de-esser FX and use that quite a lot.
We are currently trying to improve our vocal reverb FX. I was at an audio conference last week, so grabbed a very helpful A&H product manager and trainer who gave us sime helpful pointers. Just popping down to Church now to perhaps try out his suggestion…
We use interviews quite regularly, hence my suggestion. You have understood correctly.
We just got our SQ6 for our church last month. Similar to you in setup. We are also beginners to the digital mixing world, but its capabilities are fantastic for us. Every church is different, so features we find useful may not be for others. We are just now experimenting with improving FX use.
So, i am certainly interested in this thread and how people use it.
However, some features of the SQ6 we take advantage of:
panning the sources differently for live-stream than main LR
all FX on a single DCA, for ease of muting
saving/recalling individual PEQ settings for different vocalists
using the SQ mixpad during soundcheck
saw a YT video on double patching the bass guitar, 1 through a different preamp, then grouping together.
crowd mics for livestream aux out on a single DCA for better balance control.
we have a true pipe organ, so we double patch our baby grand piano and pipe organ mic to different channels to treat them differently during worship as they never play at the same time. Works phenomenally for us.
make good use of the soft-key and rotary assignment to ease burden of tech team, as our video person can adjust specifc things quickly without having to find the right fader.
talk with vocalists about proper mic use, because the mixer is good. And the sound person cannot blend / mix properly if mic technique is inconsistent.
multiple scenes for different scenario i love
restricted user rights so as to not screw things up
Our initial config for FX for reverb and delay only goes to livestream because our 175yr old sanctuary is highly reverberant already; those effects for main LR just make it sound worse and not needed. However, we are just scratching the surface of FX as we learn.
Don’t forget you can save and restore the entire input strip as a library. We do this for instruments, where the gate, PEQ and compressor are largely unique to each instrument. We just save/restore the PEQ for vocalists (at the moment).
Note that the channel name is also stored in the strip save.
Yes, setting limits on what can and can’t be adjusted is very important. We have an administrator account - we can do anything. We have an AV team account - they can change most things. We have a GUEST account that is fairly limited. In addition, we have remote foldback mix login accounts for phones with SQ4You.
Don’t forget the virtual sound check feature. We use this a lot for training.
** panning the sources differently for live-stream than main LR*
I would use a separate mix to send to the live stream - in our case (SQ7) we used Mix 8 - and control it an iPad - that way you have control over the
entire mix each channel with it’s own volume setting.
Yes, we do use an aux mix for livestream, but not all sources are set pre-fade. We found a number of them can be set as post-fade because the balance/level adjustments in FOH matches our desired livestream levels.
Yes that is convenient for when we are short techs - We have a Livestream audio mixer and a FOH mixer - once in a while the Livestream Tech cannot come and I make the mix PostFade - then the one Tech can mix both - It’s not ideal but it works in a pinch.
We have 2 OTE pastor mics, and a handheld for announcer. I keep AMM on all three channels (pastors Pri 1), because sometimes more than 1 mic is in use on stage. It helps cut down on phasing issues when another talker stands next to an OTE-wearer.
