Benefits of Multi-Track Recording a Service

I have been a traveling evangelist since 2005. When I first hit the road, the analog Peavey 24FX PA head was the mixer of choice with 4-band EQ, four aux channels, and two FX channels. As you can imagine, every room, church, auditorium, and stage required a bottom-up setup including gain staging, channel setting, and main equalization. Full sound setup for a two-hour service often took in excess of three hours. Looking back, beyond the lack of setup efficiency, the obvious problem was that it required a dedicated and trained sound person each time and nothing could be saved for future services at the same location. 

Then in 2016 came our first digital mixer and a big move for our team to Presonus equipment. Our 24.4.2 came with a couple of major upgrades. Primarily, by adding a USB Wi-Fi dongle, you could effortlessly control most of the sound board from an iPad. I say most because, discouragingly, channel gains were still only available as analog style knobs. For all intents and purposes this allowed for the ministry team to travel without a dedicated sound person since a team member could wirelessly control the mixer from anywhere. The mixer further allowed for the creation of “scenes”. These scenes were and still are the biggest upgrade in sound that I’ve ever experienced because we could effectively save all settings (except channel gains) for every location where we ministered. You can imagine, after the first year of use when we were saving locations, our sound setup and check time dropped by half. Still, we were manually gain-staging at each location and sound checks were completely live pre-service. The last major upgrade that we thought we were getting was seamless multi-track recording. The ministry team had recorded every service to CD since its inception and enjoyed the ability to send services home with people, but no post-processing was available and there were certainly occasions where recordings came out with much lower quality than desired. Unfortunately, that generation of board left too much wanting for multi-track recording. The system was infinitely finnicky and often dropped signal.  

Therefore, in 2018 the team upgraded to the next best thing, a Presonus Ai mixer. These boards are fully digital and offer seamless onboard multi-track recording. Further, via USB, the board interfaces with the Presonus Studio One digital audio workstation (DAW). Immediately, the team was truly brought into the 21st century of live sound. We were fully saving projects and scenes for every location we visited, which cut down setup times even more, but more importantly, we were able to multi-track record 100% of everything that came through the system, and I mean everything. The obvious and most-tangible benefit to the consumer was the post-service flash drives. By recording live into a DAW template, following any service, a person could request a digital copy. I underestimated the popularity that this service would get. We now find ourselves handing out dozens of flash drives after services and year after year, people bring their flash drives back and get new services reloaded. However, the flash drives only scratched the surface of the benefit to our ministry.  

A typical pre-digital soundcheck included 15 minutes of back line staging and EQ followed by another 30 minutes of multiple slow and fast songs allowing us to mix each lead and to get a harmony mix for the mains. Finally personal and floor monitors were mixed by running through a few more songs. The person preaching that service would then imitate preaching for 5 to 10 minutes to set EQ and compressors on whatever style mic they chose for the evening. The process was tedious and lent itself to vocal fatigue. Further, the vocalist or musician was constantly arm-waving or signaling to the sound person to make adjustments. Ah, those were the days… But no more. We began recording multi-track into a DAW for sound check almost immediately during the first year of owning our Ai board. The opening prayer is recorded through the preaching mic and then everyone starts together including the back line, the lead vocals, and the harmony. We run through one full hymn like “I’ll Fly Away” each lead vocalist takes a verse and a chorus and then drops back into harmony. No one worries about the live sound. After that, we may sing another selection featuring a strong lead. And that’s it… After ten minutes everyone’s on break except the sound man. Now the sound man places the soundcheck recording on loop through the mains and can get to work soloing and setting each individual channel. The process is much less stressful and leads to much higher quality channel-level sound. I’ve mentioned that with the new Ai boards, we save projects and scenes for every location, but I didn’t mention that you can also save presets for every instrument, microphone, and vocalist. Once you’ve set each channel, you can save that preset for future services. Fantastic! You may find it hard to believe, but now we average less than one hour for a full system setup and sound check at a given location and it’s my opinion that the overall sound is much better. 

You might think that if you’re not a traveling evangelist with a full band, singers, and preachers that this won’t benefit you, but in reality, these multi-track recording and preset features may be the most beneficial to churches. Think of every time a mic gets shared in a typical church. And not only the singing microphones, but even the preaching mics or pulpit mics get used by a variety of people each year. Consider how many types of services and special events occur in churches every year. Now imagine that after the first time that someone sang at the church and was recorded, the soundman post-analyzed their vocals and saved the preset. Every time that person uses a mic in the future, the soundman need only recall the preset and poof, high-quality post-processed sound in real-time and the soundman’s blood pressure never rose a beat.  

Now take all of this one step further and consider how much better and less distracting sound will be on the church media livestream when you execute the exact same strategy that you’re now using for in-house. We all know that sound in the church is far different than sound coming from your TV, and therefore, it’s obvious that a completely unique mix is necessary for that broadcast. In the 21st century, it’s in a steward’s best interest to utilize this awesome technology. You will not regret the result. 

Products Mentioned
✅ Presonus StudioLive 32SX
✅ Presonus DAW FaderPort

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