We have an Avantis and are trying to use this board to mix in-house, and output sound for our live stream. However, we want our live stream to have a separate mix/eq (maybe with the help of Waves) than what is happening in-house. I was wondering if anyone has ever dealt with this or know how this would work?
I heard of an idea that if we have enough channel space, we can duplicate each of our channels so 1 is in-house mix and 1 is live stream mix and only output the live-stream channels. But that is assuming we use less than half of the available channels which isn’t likely.
If you have to ask this question here, and you actually need to process more than 32 channels in such a complex way, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.
The question is, why do you need such a completely independent, separate mix? Most people don’t.
Is there a second engineer for this?
If it’s truly necessary without compromise, I would probably consider a second console, such as an SQ, for the second mix.
(Alternatives might include looking into dLive with up to 128 input channels to have two 64-channel setups available, or, as resort, creating a second mix on a PC or similar device and send there the signals from your Avantis via Dante, for example.)
Why not use a matrix? Or multiple subgroups (allowing signal massage between FOH & stream) feeding a matrix for stream? Unless you absolutely feel that you must have completely different EQ/processing/FX for each channel.
The most common solution is to double patch your sources into two channels. One set for FOH use and one set for broadcast use. This way each “mix” will have completely independent processing. You can even adjust channel gain through the digital trim function and not effect the other mix. As you noted, this works best when you have 32 or less sources (so that you can split every source into two channels).
That being said, you don’t really need to double patch EVERY channel if you have more than 32 sources in total. There are some obvious ones that don’t need double patching like any computer source, playback music, etc. There are likely some sources that will only go out to your broadcast mix and don’t need to be double patched for FOH (audience mics, etc).
If that hasn’t cut the source list down far enough, then start to look at your band inputs. Look at each source with an objective eye - do I really need to process this source differently for FOH and broadcast? Keyboards are probably an easy one to drop from double patching since since any processing done to them is probably going to be the same for FOH and broadcast. Do you really need a different sounding snare bottom in your broadcast vs FOH? Probably not. You just need to find the sources you can single patch and get along with just fine (which is probably the majority of them if you are honest with yourself). You’ll just need to send these “single patched” sources to your broadcast mix via a buss so that you will be able to control the broadcast level of those sources without effecting the FOH level.
Long story short, you can probably work work your list of “double patch needs” to something that can work with the 64 channels the Avantis has. If not, then you probably need to step up to the DLive anyway.
Alternatively, if you insist on having a completely separate broadcast mix where you process those sources differently than FOH, you can send out all of the sources from the console to a DAW to mix the broadcast mix in using the “tieline” feature of the Avantis. This will allow you to send the audio out of the console before any FOH processing is done. This will give you the two independent mixes you are looking for.
You can get hardware controls (like midi faders/buttons/encoders) so that it feels more like mixing with a console vs a DAW. That is another relatively inexpensive solution should you decide that you don’t have the capacity to double patch your source effectively enough in the console. Certainly it’s cheaper than purchasing a second console to “mix” the broadcast feed on.