Is anyone hybridizing church services?

[JWS2021]

I've been hosting remote church services for well over a year, and have been generally happy wit the outcome.  I've now been asked if I can duplicate the experience inside a church that seats 150+ with a 2 story vaulted ceiling, organ and soloist.  The room is previously mic'd and speaker-ed with a 20+ year old Radio shack amp.  I tested using multiple PC's, and the video isn't a problem, but I have no idea what to do about the sound.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Rupert]

@JWS2021 

I am involved in another group that helps all kinds of houses of worship.

There are all kinds of ways to get hybrid working successfully.

Feel free to stop by https://www.facebook.com/HMTForum/

There is a weekly Zoom session to answer questions and share ideas:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lc-ivqD4pHtYWHjriAUCgE0aE9TbVAObz

Past sessions can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWmmN_Iv7UPuNJXZJLyivhA

You are right though - audio is always the biggest challenge.

We also have some audio experts in another external group called "Office Hours". There is a daily Q&A session on Zoom also - and situations like yours are often discussed. Feel free to stop by there also - you'll get some very good answers. You can follow instructions in the Chat during the meeting there. Register at https://zoom.us/j/844989302 

Rupert

[johncampbell]

I run the technology for chapel services at a small seminary.

We have half of our students in our chapel space for worship. The other half join via zoom remotely.
We have it set up so that I can show our slides on the front screen normally.
We have a secondary display on a side wall where the online participants can be seen during worship.
I also have it setup so that people on zoom can be placed on a front panel (using our Blackmagic video Switcher) so they can be seen and heard..we do this because we want remote worshipers to be able to lead parts of the service (Prayer/scripture/preaching..etc). 
Many churches (my own included) use the term 'hybrid' to mean 'turn a camera on'...Worship should be participatory and I believe that we should be intentionally engaging the online worshipers, not just letting them be oberservers...this impacts our tech, how we organize our services and even having volunteers who are 'digital hosts'..who sit on a camera welcoming people when they join and engaging in conversation.

We even setup a screen so people can walk up to it and talk to the online people before and after our service.

We run microphones / music instruments into and old mixer. Also, we take the audio feed from the computer running zoom and put it into a channel on the board to control the audio int the room for when zoom participants speak.
I then run the main channel out to the speaker into the room.
I run an auxiliary channel into our black magic web presenter that is sent into the zoom meeting. This gives me the ability to mix the sound for the online people which is different to what the room needs. For example, or space is small so we don't really need a microphone on the pulpit for people to hear..so I don't put that audio through our house speakers...I do however send it through the aux1 channel to our zoom meeting so they have a good, clear audio source.
Alternativly, when someone on zoom is speaking I only want it to be heard in the room...not looping back into zoom..so I put it in the main mix, and remove it from the aux1/zoom feed.

So, my advice is to use your amp if you can to handle all the audio...as long as you have the ability to use a montior/aux channel to create a separate mix...do not feed your main house mix into your live feed as it will sound terrible...At my home church we don't mic the organ for obvious reasons...but that means that in our recordings you don't really hear the instrument...just the vocalists..and it sounds terrible.

Hope that helps.

John Campbell
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville, Nova Scotia



The audio part can be tricky