Full Worship AV: Band Rig, Sound Routing & Livestream

The challenge

The worship team had outgrown an aging analog board wired by three generations of volunteers. Feedback during praise sets, monitor mixes nobody could adjust mid-service, and a livestream that sounded like a phone in a gym bag. The band needed real instruments on stage — keys, electronic drums, guitar and bass — without turning the room into a volume war, and the stream needed to look and sound like the room actually feels.

Our approach

We started from the room, not the gear list: mapped every input the band and pastors actually use on a typical Sunday, then designed the signal flow around a digital mixing console that gives the livestream its own dedicated mix bus — so the broadcast mix stops fighting the room mix. Speaker routing was zoned: mains and subs for the congregation, front fills for the first rows, and stage monitoring the band controls from their phones. The microphone plan covered wireless handhelds and headsets for the platform, wired mics for choir and drums, and DIs for keys, bass, and tracks. Video came last, on purpose: PTZ cameras and a switcher feeding an encoder that takes the dedicated stream bus — audio follows video, never the other way around. Everything phased across two giving seasons, with cabling and patch points labeled so any volunteer can trace a signal.

The outcome

Volunteers run consistent mixes from a saved Sunday-morning scene, the band hears itself without pushing the room, and the livestream carries a real broadcast mix instead of a room mic. The build landed in two phases the budget could actually carry, and the documentation means the system outlives any one operator.

Equipment highlights

• ▪Digital mixing console with a dedicated livestream mix bus and phone-app monitor control
• ▪Band backline: electronic drum kit, stage piano, guitar and bass DI/amp solutions
• ▪Wireless handheld and headset microphones for the platform; wired vocal, choir, and drum mics
• ▪FOH mains, subs, and front fills with zoned speaker routing; in-ear and wedge stage monitoring
• ▪PTZ cameras with a video switcher and streaming encoder fed from the broadcast bus
• ▪Stage boxes and labeled snake cabling with a documented patch map for volunteers