Can't be heard!!!

[David Cook]

Hi, I play bass in the church worship band. We do not meet in what might be called a traditional church but in a room within the community centre.

There is a drummer, keyboard player, lead guitar, rhythm guitar and at least two singers.

The signals from all amps and mics are sent to a sound tech at the desk and then to the main speaker system in the room.

Our meetings are streamed live on Facebook.

People in the congregation say they can clearly hear the bass during the meeting but when I listen back to the service on Facebook I cannot hear the bass. Is this to do with the frequency emitted? I can hear all of the other instruments.

[mep]

How are you listening to the playback?

[Owen]

Is FB receiving the same mix as the PA in the room? If so, it is possible that you are not in the PA becuase your amp is loud enough. Is it a separate mix for FB? It is possible that you have inexperienced techs who are doing a room mix and doing a FB mix on headphones in the same room. If the bass is loud enough in the room then it will be rolling into the headphones from the room and they would think "I can hear the bass" and not add any more. 

 

Amongst many other possibilities!

[David Cook]

Thanks for your replies. Firstly I am listening to the Facebook playback on my laptop and from our church Facebook page. What other ways are there to listen to Facebook other than by using headphones ?

I'm not sure about the mix that goes to Facebook, this I will need to ask. I am definitely in the PA mix as my amp is really only for personal monitoring. My wife has told me she can hear me coming from the speakers on her side of the room (opposite to where the band sets up). I think you probably identified the issue with how FB is receiving the mix. The tech on the desk is by no means professional but has been doing the job for many years. I think he gets the room mix ok but we have only been live on Facebook since after the second lockdown and maybe he hasn't sussed this out.

[SimonK]

If the feed to facebook mirrors the feed to the FOH you will have too little bass especially if you are using an amp as well, simply because low frequencies tend to propagate around a room very well (and even more so if there are subs) so a lot of the bass people hear in the room will probably be bouncing off things. But for a completely online feed you will need to be boosted way more in the mix to be heard in a similar way as in the room. Also bear in mind people tend to listen to live feeds through tiny speakers or cheap headphones, so the chances are even if the bass frequencies are there again no one will hear it!

 

...it can be a sad and unappreciated life playing bass...

[PaulWarning]

If you're using your laptop speakers you'll never hear bass, headphones should help

edit, just reread the post, if you don't want to use headphones you cold do what I do and and connect the laptop to a stereo system, or buy some good quality computer speakers, built in laptop speakers are barely better than ones that are in a phone

Edited May 21 by PaulWarning

[David Cook]

Thanks all for responding. I guess, Simon, it is something I will have to live with. If the bass was to be boosted to a level people listening to FB could detect then people in the room would hear it too loud and out of balance. I guessed it must be something to do with frequency

I will hook up my headphones Paul and give it a go.

 

Edited May 21 by David Cook

[asingardenof]

How are you streaming? Are you able to use an output from the PA mixer through an audio interface via USB and use that as the "microphone" Windows uses?

[woodyratm]

Yeah - I think the question is how they stream. 
 

A local venue I gig at stream, but the mix is completely independent of the FOH sound. So on the night it sounds awesome and I’m audible… to viewing the stream and I’m barely there mostly. You end up hearing them adjusting levels.

[Huge Hands]

As others have said - it may be down to how the feed is sent to the stream from the mixer.

 

I seem to remember a FOH engineer once told me he had worked with a band on Chris Evans'  TFI Friday TV programme in the 90s.  IIRC he said the mixer faders were used for the PA/crowd in the room and the TV feed was mixed using the auxiliary sends on each channel. This, he explained, was why it didn't always sound great on TV as the engineer would be concentrating on the room.

 

I could be wrong and it could have been the other way around, but either way, you can get totally separate mixes from the same desk if done this way and might explain why it is wildly different on FB.  It might also be worth checking the various points in the chain of EQ, transmission to laptop, encoding, streaming etc to see if there are any HPF/bandwidth reduction settings which may cause a perceived loss of bottom end along the way?

 

 

  

[Boodang]

Quick anecdote… I had an SWR combo with four 8” speakers. On it’s own it sounded awful, in the band context sounded great and cut thru really nicely. 
Basically, do you have a scooped tone that disappears in the mix?! 

[Owen]

Mixing live and broadcast in the same room is virtually impossible. We do the same at church but have a desk which can also be operated by an iPad. This means I can leave the room to make sure the "broadcast" mix is ok. We also have a nice pair of Sony noise cancelling headphones to help. But it is all compromise. And we go out on Zoom which does HORRIBLE things to full band audio. 

[Suburban Man]

Having worked in broadcast for many years I can confirm that the difference between 'live' sound and 'broadcast' sound are huge.  The bigger TV shows use two different mixers and sound operators to achieve a decent result in each case.  Obviously most people streaming these days don't have anything like that luxury, so it comes down to whether your sound desk is flexible enough to produce two different feeds and how those are monitored.  

If you want to know whether the problem is in the feed, or in the way that it is being streamed then it should be possible to record the sound feed to the streaming device at source - ie a split off the feed as it leaves the mixer and goes to the streaming device.  is the bass audible in that recording? If not, the problem is with the mix.  If the bass is ok at that point then the streaming device/software/interface is causing the bass roll-off. 

 

The fix in either case will be different - and may of course be impossible without spending a lot of money.  Good luck!

[SimonK]

I too play in church, and once did a big conference that was streamed live. They had one mixer for the auditorium and then everything was doubled and sent into a studio where there was a separate engineer mixing to a set of relatively crappy speakers, arguing that is what most people would be listening through. I imagine the two mixes were very different.

 

Taking a feed off aux sends is what we do for recording on occasion, and I normally set the mix through headphones, although its often pretty rough. Ideally, as above, you would have a separate person doing it.