Trouble with P.A and Live Streaming

[CalumisMe]

This may not make any sense but i'll a give it a shot....

 

I am 'on charge' of running the tech team for a small church that my dad ministers, we use the (5 input) Fender Passport conference portable P.A system (not my choosing but we work with what we got) but it doesn't have any outputs for recording - plugging in to the headphone out won't work as it creates a loud buzzing sound. The ultimate goal is to live stream with obs. We have a focusrite scarlet solo we used in lockdown and could use a mixer but don't want to as we don't own a building and we have to setup and tear down every Sunday morning in a rented conference room. If any one has any solutions or if you require any extra information plz reply.

Thanks - Calum

 

P.s - I'm only in my early teens so don't have huge knowledge in this kind of stuff :D

[RONOTHAN##]

For the record, I'm not an audio engineer or have any real qualifications for this. I know enough to be dangerous and enough to give you a starting off point for what to look at. 

 

What seems like the most straightforward solution to this would be to mic the P.A. system. It's not an ideal solution, that would be as you said to output directly from the PA to a computer, but it would work and isn't that out of the ordinary for sound recording. A decent amount of Guitarists, for example, mic their amps rather than plug into a soundboard for recording because they prefer the sound. I'd recommend doing a bit of research into that area, finding out what kind of microphone would work best, and see if you would be able to use the Scarlet Solo to record that and stream with a laptop or something. That would probably be the best bang for the buck solution given what you currently have.

 

If anyone else responds with a different solution, go with what they said, again I'm not an expert or an audio engineer, I've just got a couple friends who are musicians and am going off what I've seen them do and what I've helped them do. 

[Alvin853]

I think the reason you can't capture from the headphone out is because there are different levels of audio signal. Mic level is very low power, Instrument level slightly above that, Line level is the typical headphone/speaker output of most devices, and amplified Speaker Level that goes to high power speakers.

 

 

Your Scarlett Solo is expecting Mic Level on its inputs, but you're providing Line Level, so the signal is just going to be too high. You can try setting the level on your PA headphone out very low and use the 2nd input on the Scarlett Solo in "INST"-mode with very low gain, maybe that way it'll work, but most likely the signal will still be too high.

 

The smarter way would probably be to connect the mic to the Scarlett Solo and then use the direct monitor line-out on the back of the Scarlett Solo to connect to your PA. Make sure you set the input on the PA to line level though or you're going to have the same buzzing again.

 

Another option: You could use the Scarlett Solo to feed the input to your computer and then connect the PA to the computer. But this way you're going to add some delay to the output, which usually distracts the speaker if they hear their own voice with a small delay.

[Alvin853]

Two more thoughts:

 

First up, the headphone out is most likely stereo, while the mic in is mono, so depending on the type of cable you're using, you could be crossing both channels of the stereo or crossing one channel to ground or something. So it really isn't a good idea to feed a headphone out line into a mic in.

 

And the other suggestion: there are some budget USB sound cards that have a line-in port, so maybe ditch the Scarlett Solo and just get something different to capture from the PA? 

[CalumisMe]

19 hours ago, Alvin853 said:

Your Scarlett Solo is expecting Mic Level on its inputs, but you're providing Line Level, so the signal is just going to be too high. You can try setting the level on your PA headphone out very low and use the 2nd input on the Scarlett Solo in "INST"-mode with very low gain, maybe that way it'll work, but most likely the signal will still be too high.

 

The smarter way would probably be to connect the mic to the Scarlett Solo and then use the direct monitor line-out on the back of the Scarlett Solo to connect to your PA. Make sure you set the input on the PA to line level though or you're going to have the same buzzing again.

Thanks will try these soulutions out it seems like one of them should work! (I had already tried your 3rd suggetion and it does indeed create far to big a delay)

19 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

What seems like the most straightforward solution to this would be to mic the P.A. system. It's not an ideal solution, that would be as you said to output directly from the PA to a computer, but it would work and isn't that out of the ordinary for sound recording. A decent amount of Guitarists, for example, mic their amps rather than plug into a soundboard for recording because they prefer the sound

and if all elses fails I'll have a go at this as well