How Will These FX Change Our MIX???? | Behringer FX in the X32, M32 and Xair Consoles

Summary

In this video, Dave from AllamHouse delves into enhancing a live stream mix using various Behringer FX plugins on X32, M32, and Xair consoles. He revisits a previous mix to improve it by experimenting with different plugins and settings, moving away from traditional limiting and EQing approaches. By doing so, Dave aims to achieve a more balanced and dynamic audio output for the mix. Throughout, he shows how different plugins affect the sound and offers practical insights for viewers working with similar audio setups.

Highlights

• Delving into new plugins brings unique textures and warmth to audio mixes! 🎧
• Reversing the roles of traditional audio tools like limiters can lead to surprising results! 🔄
• Setting up the mix with careful consideration of frequencies enhances the listening experience. 📈
• Exploration of Behringer FX plugins leads to exciting possibilities for audio shaping. 🎵
• Understanding different plugin capabilities allows for more dynamic and lively mixes! 🎼

Key Takeaways

• Experiment with new plugins to discover fresh sounds and enhance your mix! 🎸
• Using compressors creatively can change the character of your mix significantly! 🎚️
• Don't be afraid to toggle settings and compare results; it aids in understanding what works best. 🔄
• Mix accordingly and adapt your settings to suit live stream environments for best results! 🎧
• Always test your mix in real scenarios to see how it holds up under different streaming platforms. 💻

Overview

Dave from AllamHouse returns to improve a church's live stream mix using Behringer FX plugins on X32, M32, and Xair consoles. In this engaging tutorial, he experiments with various plugins and settings to replace traditional limiting with more dynamic compression, aiming for a richer and more balanced mix.

The video explores flipping standard audio engineering practices by using compressors as limiters, tinkering with stereo spreads, and playing with channel settings. This hands-on approach not only adjusts the mix but offers a detailed guide on what listeners should focus on when using these plugins.

This tutorial is a treasure trove for audio enthusiasts looking to revitalize their sound. Dave emphasizes practical testing in real-world streaming scenarios, encouraging viewers to try things out on YouTube, Facebook, or other platforms, making this a must-watch for anyone eager to enhance their audio mixes.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Recap In this chapter, Dave welcomes viewers back to Alam House Sound and introduces the live stream series. This session is focused on refining the live stream mix for a church or organization. The chapter recaps part one, where they set everything up from the DAW to the console using X32 Edit, and part two, where they built a satisfactory mix.
• 01:30 - 05:00: Computer Setup and Initial Plugin Exploration In this chapter titled 'Computer Setup and Initial Plugin Exploration', the speaker discusses their audio setup focusing on the processing of the main output. The setup involves adding compression, a limiter, and EQing to the main outputs to enhance the broadcast mix. The speaker refers back to a previous video and acknowledges that the EQ boost on the top end was excessive. They emphasize that this setup provides the group with valuable material to work with and encourages the audience to generate ideas from this configuration.
• 05:00 - 10:00: Using Edison EX1 Plugin In this chapter, the speaker sets up a studio with a computer to explore different plugins on The Matrix. They plan to use a compressor as a limiter and experiment by inserting various plugins and effects to see how the sounds differ.
• 10:00 - 16:00: Exploring Stereo Exciter Plugin In this chapter, we begin by setting up our audio equipment, including turning on the headphones and plugging them into the console. We then review the current state of our mix to understand where we are starting from. This involves listening to our existing settings and discussing how we will proceed with adjustments using a stereo exciter plugin.
• 16:00 - 23:00: Experimenting with Stereo Enhancer In the chapter titled 'Experimenting with Stereo Enhancer,' the focus is on using stereo enhancement techniques in audio mixing. The transcript snippet provided mentions the speed of a mix and some musical elements ('cross God' and '[Music]'), indicating a practical experiment or demonstration. Furthermore, there is a brief mention of using an EQ (equalizer) setting as part of the process, although specific details or outcomes of the enhancement experiments are not included in the snippet.
• 23:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts In this concluding chapter, the focus is on the final steps of mixing and mastering a track. The main stereo bus comes into play, equipped with a basic compressor and equalization settings, particularly on the high frequencies. It is emphasized that adjustments, especially on the high shelf EQ, should generally not exceed 2 to 2.5 decibels, as larger adjustments can affect the track's overall balance. The chapter reflects on the importance of subtlety in mastering to ensure a polished final product.

How Will These FX Change Our MIX???? | Behringer FX in the X32, M32 and Xair Consoles Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey welcome back to Alam house sound this is Dave and today we're going to jump back into our live stream edition of uh of redoing this Church's this group and organization's live stream mix so we've done part one where we kind of set everything up from the doll and into our console we did some work in X32 edit and got everything up and running pretty good our second video was us going through and building a mix getting a mix pretty good now that mix was going
• 00:30 - 01:00 through the uh the main output hitting some compression then going to a matrix throughout the process we have added compression a limiter some eqing on the main outs to really get a good broadcast mix started now in that previous video we talked about how the EQ the boost on the top end was probably a little much let's all agree on that but regardless it's giving this group some stuff to play with some material to work with and hopefully you getting some ideas as well
• 01:00 - 01:30 so we're going to jump back into that I've got the the studio set up here with my computer so we're going to be able to dive into the computer listen to those same tracks and we're going to explore a couple different uh plugins on The Matrix and so instead of using the limiter on our Matrix we're going to use the compressor of that Matrix as a limiter so we're going to flip some things around and we're going to insert some different plugins or effects uh in its place and just see what the sounds come out to be so enough talking let's
• 01:30 - 02:00 just dive into the computer we'll bring you along with us here we [Music] go all right so we got the headphones turned on and plugged into the console actually and uh we got a couple different things set up here but let's take a listen to where we were with the mix as we get started here and we'll kind of talk through and review some of our settings just to bring you up to to
• 02:00 - 02:30 speed so here's our mix cross God you [Music] see so when I on my knees with my hands high oh God so this is the EQ that's on our
• 02:30 - 03:00 [Music] we've got all of our mix going to the main bus the main stereo bus does have uh a basic compressor here we've got some eqing and this top end here see this High shelf plus 60b uh we want to have some of this come up at the top end but 60b is probably a little much normally when we're doing some uh finalizing or mastering of a track we're going to move in like 2 DB at the most maybe 2 and a half if you really have have to make a change but if you need
• 03:00 - 03:30 that much 60b it seems like we need to fix that somewhere else in the mix not at the master or the main output like this so we're going to want to get that turned back down but again this is sending to a matrix so if we take a look at the Matrix we'll come down here and we're going to Matrix 1 and two if we click on Matrix one uh we've got no compression added here we do have an EQ which you can see we're pulling out a little bit of this uh this mid-range and
• 03:30 - 04:00 that is about 500 HZ but outside of that if we hit the effects here we're also hitting Matrix 1 and two is hitting this limiter so if we talk through this path now we're going to take this limiter and we're going to bring it out of Engagement we're going to switch that up a little bit we're going to use that that's the spot that we're going to use to shift our plugin and kind of play with some things in a minute so we're going to leave the mix going going into
• 04:00 - 04:30 the main output we're going to leave the main output going through this compressor so let's go back to the main output and we'll look at the channel here so first it's hitting that 1176 compressor then it's going to the EQ and then it's going to another compressor so if we don't need all that let's just turn this compressor off here but I think this one was helping me get our level up let's not change anything except for the EQ that's better
• 04:30 - 05:00 so in my ears right now 60b doesn't sound drastic it doesn't sound too much however we're going to see if we can use a different plugin to get more of that back so let's set this back at zero here and we'll just be able to kind of flip back and forth the next thing we want to do is choose our plugin so let's click on type and the Edison ex1 was the one that was recommended for us to take a look at so we'll come in here now now what we want to do is first change around our
• 05:00 - 05:30 our Channel strip on this Matrix so we're going to click on Matrix come up to channel and right now we want to make sure that the compressor is at the end so we're going to move our effects so we'll say insert is going to go pre we'll insert it this compressor here this is going to be what we treat as our limiter so let's go ahead and take a look at that let's let's turn on some
• 05:30 - 06:00 music and dial in some settings real [Music] quick so we want this to be a limiter so we're going to turn this all the way up 100 to [Music] one and we want to see when do we get any any sort of gain reduction and we're hitting that just a little bit here so I'm going to come back up and loosen this up
• 06:00 - 06:30 for I all right turn our attack all the way down hold down and I'll release up so these are kind of our standard settings a fast attack a fast uh fast attack no hold and our release around 500 milliseconds uh we've got this so it was just hitting the gain reduction and then we backed off just a touch so we've got that set up right now and again if
• 06:30 - 07:00 we come back to our Channel strip now that'll be the last thing the limiter will be the last thing that we hit now we do have the capability we were using the limiter previously uh to get some more volume out of what we've got going on so we'll see if we can get that with this plugin so let's take a look at the plugin bring that up here's the Edison so we've got a couple different features here we're going to exaggerate this and make it way out of line just to
• 07:00 - 07:30 see what it does and and then we see we've got an output gain here so we can kind of mess with that Ms input is going to switch from being a stereo input to a mid and side input which is a very different thing if you've not explored that maybe you check out some some features uh on some home studio setup a lot of people that do studio recording mixes they will deal with midside compression and midside features like this one when not going to do that also
• 07:30 - 08:00 the phase correlation meter it's going to Blink and move around I'm not going to pay attention to it I'm just going to move some move some knobs here and see what we get here we [Music] go all right so let's see how this sounds here we're going to put the spread up so that makes our stereo field much wider
• 08:00 - 08:30 on my knees with my high oh [Music] god let's see what the low mid frequency spread [Music] is there's nothing to fear now
• 08:30 - 09:00 so that's interesting looking at these tools the stereo spread takes anything we've got and just makes it much wider I kind of like that feature maybe we'll add some of that in low mid frequency spread is taking the low mids and it's either spreading it really wide which makes it sound muddier to me um or it's shrinking it down almost into a mono setting that could be kind of cool but let's keep playing uh Center distribution not sure what that's going to do but let's find
• 09:00 - 09:30 [Music] out see the balance here as you would expect all right all [Music] leftos oh that's [Music] cool
• 09:30 - 10:00 so that's pretty cool the center disc uh I'm assuming that's distribution but what that's doing is it's it's turning down so our reverbs and delays are all way out to the side our guitars are panned to left and rights and when we turn that down or counterclockwise we're getting rid of the center and just getting that outside stuff so it's kind of a midside tool when we turn it up or clockwise we're getting just what's in the middle so our vocals come out in the mix more so you
• 10:00 - 10:30 could kind of play around I think with the stereo spread and then that Center distribution to kind of get uh a bigger wider sound but maybe still keep the vocals up front let's play with that and see what we [Music] get so if I turn up the [Music] spread on my knees with my head lifted High
• 10:30 - 11:00 [Music] so this is normal we'll turn it on just a little bit more WID and then if I turn this up [Music] [Applause] down and if you are me off and then back on
• 11:00 - 11:30 [Music] on and maybe I turn the output gain up just cuz that makes us [Music] happy now we're hitting our limiter let's go look at our limiter again yeah we're hitting that limit now so
• 11:30 - 12:00 so when I on my knees with my hands high oh God the battle belongs to you every I I I'll sing through the night oh God your love surrounds me that's kind of cool so that that tool is adding some width but still gives us that ability to bring the to Center things everything in
• 12:00 - 12:30 the middle that's not Pann left and right gives us that ability to kind of bring it up and out of the mix uh to poke out on top kind of nice it it does accentuate some things again we've talked about this Kick Drum in the previous video uh how it is an electric kit and the attack on that uh was was sometimes not matching up with some of the information in their tracks so we were getting kind of a little phasing and sometimes kind of a lazy foot and you would hear the beater bounce and so you get this double hit sometimes so
• 12:30 - 13:00 that was kind of being accentuated when we pulled that up in the mix uh but interesting enough I really kind of like that tool it's gotten us away from the EQ cuz keep in mind we turn that top end EQ down 6 DB and use this to kind of bring our mix back to life so that's kind of nice um I wonder what else we can get into in here let's just take a look and see if there's another tool we want to mess with let me turn this off for a minute let's pull up the stereo
• 13:00 - 13:30 enhancer uh stereo Exciter and see what that does so here's going to be a stereo Exciter so this has a couple different things um tuned so we've got some kilohertz so it sounds like my assumption is that this tool is going to be adding some upper harmonics and I do see the term harmonics here so maybe we just turn it on in this Factory environment uh factory settings here and see what we get and then we'll with them and uh and see if we can find something
• 13:30 - 14:00 even [Music] better are for me who can be against me for Jesus there's nothing impossible for you when all I see are the AC you see the
• 14:00 - 14:30 [Music] Bea see the cross God you see [Music] to oh God belong to you fear may [Music]
• 14:30 - 15:00 [Music] I for I am sa with you so when I F fight on my knees with my hands
• 15:00 - 15:30 so what I was doing was jumping around let me turn this off here I was jumping around in the settings and I was trying to uh this got this solo mode where you can hear only what the affected sound is so that's kind of a nice feature but I was messing with the just turn it all the way up and then turn it it was going to sound horrible we know that but then we turn it down we kind of adjust to see what uh what the settings do and and if we can get a good sound and then the mix at the end I started with at zero and then blended it in it didn't give me the
• 15:30 - 16:00 overall effect that I was looking for but I can see where a stereo Exciter on certain inputs might be really nice to add some Shimmer and add some upper harmonics into the mix but on a main bus I I don't in this context it's not doing anything positive for me so let's uh let's try and take a look at one more and then we'll wrap this up
• 16:00 - 16:30 all right so we've got a stereo enhancer here so we're going to turn it on we're going to see what it does so this is going to impact my voice as well but this is here and I'm going to turn the music on and this also looks like it has a solo mode so we can kind of do the same thing we'll solo what's what this is doing I won't talk we'll turn some buttons and not and then we'll see if we can find a good fit um I see an output
• 16:30 - 17:00 gain I see a spread and then I see high medium high mids and lows in terms of what we can mess with and enhance let's see what we [Music] get already listen to the solo mode it sounds very Punchy in the bottom end the
• 17:00 - 17:30 [Applause] [Music] battle and if you are me who can be against me you when all see
• 17:30 - 18:00 [Music] so what I did is I found some frequencies that I think are going to be beneficial in the low end we've got a little bit of that low punch in the mid-range I turn the mid-range down in terms of its frequency to try and uh find more of the guitar sounds the electric guitar sounds and see if that adds more meat as well as the snare drum and then the top end I think we're just going to try and accentuate some of the
• 18:00 - 18:30 vocals but now I'm just going to bring those gains up and try not to overdo it and see if I can get something that sounds pretty good I am going to turn the spread from 22% up to 50% just to see what that does as we add these in all right here we [Music] go so when I my knees with my hands lifted high oh
• 18:30 - 19:00 God the battle belongs to you every fear I lay your feet I'll sing through the night oh [Music] God so now I just want to listen to it on and off so we'll come up here and we'll use the effects insert here and uh and mess with it that way
• 19:00 - 19:30 so this is on so we lose a little little bit of the life in the low and and [Music] [Applause] mid-range turn back off all I see is the cross God you see [Music]
• 19:30 - 20:00 I want to turn some of the high frequency down on this though Mye with my every fear I your feet I'll sing through the night oh God your love surrounds me [Music]
• 20:00 - 20:30 there's nothing to fear now for I sa last thing we want to do is look at our limiter and see how that's [Music] doing all right overall I kind of like that the that stereo enhancer that's kind of a nice tool I mean it added some nice roundness in the bottom into the mix I do want to listen you know if it
• 20:30 - 21:00 were me again I'm always a big proponent of let's put this through a real live stream uh well a test live stream but through the real live stream environment so that we can hear what do you you know in my case what is YouTube going to do with this mix if you're going through vcam or ecam or V miix or whatever they are uh go through those and see what they sound like Facebook specifically uh check and see what that sounds like if if you haven't seen uh James AdAway from
• 21:00 - 21:30 AdAway audio his recent video is really great about Facebook and what Facebook does with your audio so we want to put these through the real live environment of what we're doing and then hear what these uh these plugins or or effects are doing with the sound so in my headphones I really liked that lowend it warmed it up and made it a little bit more round uh and added some more life to it the top end might have been a little bright but keep in mind we don't have EQ we can now use some EQ because if we look at it
• 21:30 - 22:00 again we're affecting the sound right here before we hit this EQ that's on the uh on the Matrix so if we needed to we could come in here and if it was a little too spicy you can see maybe up in these frequencies we could turn that down a little bit if we needed to just to color and shape the sound but anyway this is kind of a fun little example and uh and little you know dive into some of these these tools TOS that are in the X32 I hope you found it helpful go ahead
• 22:00 - 22:30 and give it a thumbs up and uh share the video subscribe if you're not subscribed to the channel we're always putting out content to try and help you make your mixes better uh but if you got questions leave those down in the comment section below I'm always answering questions you can also find links down there to some of my um either my website where if you need further assistance you can get some help down there uh filling out the contact card that allows us to start a conversation outside of YouTube and uh you might be looking for some some cables or little tools or knickknacks
• 22:30 - 23:00 and I've got the Amazon Shop link down there as well for some of my favorite items that I use in many places including my studio here but thanks again for watching this video we will catch you guys in the next one [Music] peace