Church IT – Supporting ministry with IT

It really shouldn’t have taken me quite so long to get to grips with Aux channels on our mixer. After all they are responsible for 48 of the knobs (in two different colours) so it’s not as if they are easy to miss.

Well perhaps I’m being unfair on myself. I did use them when recording the carol service last year, but it’s taken my until now to think about using them properly.

Two of the four channels have always been in use, one for the all important induction loop and the other so that people in the vestry have some idea what is going on in the service. The other two have now been drafted in for recording purposes.

Simply put they allow the willing soundperson to create an entirely separate mix for recording, independently of the levels for front of house. The spur for me was our keyboard. Normally it is set so loud the challenge on the desk is not to make it heard, but stop it from spilling into other mics.

That wasn’t too hard with some careful mic placement. The problem was then when I wanted to start recording services. With virtually no keyboard through the main output, the tape output was nigh on useless.

The solution: Aux channels. I can run as much or as little through each without affecting the main mix.

Additional

In fact, even that needed some tweaking, due to the very different levels between speech and the worship group. In the end I recorded the radio mics on one channel and the music on another. At some point I will have a go at mixing them together.