So, you’ve got an event coming up and there are people who need to be able to participate remotely. People in the room need to be able to hear the people on Zoom (or Teams, or whatever), and the people who are remote need to be able to hear what’s going on in the room. If you’ve got a small enough event and room, no problem, just grab a bluetooth conference speaker/mic and you’re good to go. But what if it’s a bigger room? Let’s say you’ve got an auditorium with a lectern and an audience that needs to be able to ask questions of the presenter.
Here are some notes.
You’re going to need some equipment. At minimum, you’re going to need a laptop and a USB audio interface for the host of the meeting to run audio and do any chat moderation and whatnot. This should not be the same laptop that the presenter is using for slides at the lectern. For the audio interface, I recommend a Behringer UMC204HD, currently $120.
If you are in a venue which is providing a built-in PA and their own microphones, you will need to find out from them how you can get two connections to their mixer. You’ll need to connect an output from the audio interface to an input on their mixer, and you’ll need to connect an output from their mixer to an input on your audio interface. And then, this is key: they need to set up the output they’re sending to you as a mix-minus, sending you a mix of all their microphones without the audio from the input they’re getting from your interface. The audio coming from your interface should be mixed with their mic inputs and sent into the house PA, but only the microphones should be fed back into your interface.
If they can’t or don’t know how to do this, you may need more equipment, potentially including a mixer and microphones. If they can give you a feed from their mixer and you don’t need anyone participating remotely to be able to speak into the room, then you don’t need any other equipment. If they can’t get you a feed from their mixer or if you need remote participants to be amplified in the room, then you will need a mixer, at least. I recommend a Soundcraft EPM6, which is what we have at work. I personally have a Mackie 802, which also works, but has fewer inputs.
Here are images of the front and back of the audio interface, and the mixer. I’ll refer to jacks on these below.
Scenario 1: the venue can get you a mix-minus
This requires the least amount of equipment on your part and the most planning, since you will need to work with the venue to make sure they can provide what you need, and they will have time constraints.
- Connect the output from the venue to Input 1 on your audio interface. The venue should be able to loan you an XLR cable to use.
- Connect Main Out L from your interface to the venue’s input. You will need a 1/4″ TRS to male XLR cable for this, and the venue may not have one.
- Connect the audio interface to your laptop with a USB cable.
- Push the mono/stereo button on the interface in, to mono.
- Turn the “mix” knob all the way clockwise to “PB”. (This makes it so that only audio coming from your computer goes out of the interface and into their mixer.)
- Set the laptop’s system audio to the USB audio interface, and turn its volume all the way up.
- Working with the venue’s audio engineer, get some sound playing on your laptop to the audio interface and set an appropriate output level using the “Main Out” knob.
- Set the laptop’s system audio to anything but the USB audio interface, and turn its volume all the way down.
- Get someone to speak into a microphone and turn the “Gain 1” knob clockwise just until the red “Clip” light goes on while they speak, then turn it back a little until it no longer lights up while they’re speaking. Give them a poem or something to recite; don’t put them on the spot to keep saying “test one, test two”.
- If you’re using Zoom, this would be a good time to make sure that it’s set to use the audio interface for both its microphone and speakers, and test both of them. You should hear the speaker test music over the PA when you test the speakers, and when you speak into the microphone during the microphone test it should be amplified in the room and repeated back into the PA a short while later.
- This laptop should be the only one connected to the meeting with audio unmuted. All of the audio from the room is going to go through this laptop’s connection to the meeting.
- A laptop on the podium can be connected to the same meeting with its screen shared for slides and a camera attached and pointed at the presenter. Audio should be connected but muted, if the presentation being shared has audio. If not, leave audio disconnected. Make sure that the “Share Sound” box is checked when you start sharing a presentation with audio in it. If it isn’t, the presentation’s audio may play over the PA, but not feed into Zoom.
- I am really liking the functionality of the Insta360 Link as an improvement over a laptop’s built-in camera.
- If possible, set the resolution of the presenter’s laptop to 1280×720 — if they have a high resolution screen, remote participants may get choppy video or slow slide transitions. Checking the “optimize for video” box when sharing the screen may do this automatically; I’m not sure.
- People on Zoom can be unmuted and when they talk it will be amplified in the room.
Scenario 2: the venue can get you a feed of what’s going to the PA, but not a mix-minus
In this scenario, you can stream the event but remote attendees cannot have their audio amplified into the room. I would call this a “streamed” event, not a “hybrid” one.
- Connect the output from the venue to Input 1 on your audio interface. The venue should be able to loan you an XLR cable to use.
- Connect the audio interface to your laptop with a USB cable.
- Those are the only connections to make. Everything else is as above, except that no sound will be coming back from the computer and into the PA.
- People participating remotely should ask questions in text chat and someone in the room can relay them into a microphone.
- I recommend having another laptop with headphones connected to the meeting at least initially so you can verify that the room’s PA is being sent into the meeting.
Scenario 3: You can’t get a mix-minus but will have remote presenters or otherwise need remote participants’ audio amplified in the room
This is also the scenario you’d use if you’re in a space which doesn’t have its own PA you can connect to. In that case, you’d need to bring your own portable PA system, which could be as simple as one or two powered PA speakers and stands. Otherwise, all you will need is a single input to the venue’s PA. This is pretty similar to scenario 1, except that you’re also playing the role of the venue.
- Connect all your microphones to input channels on your mixer. If the venue has microphones available, great. They’ll have to provide an XLR plug or cable for each, though — if they’ve got wireless microphones which are connected to their PA and you can’t get individual signals from each mic (potentially by unplugging them from the house PA and plugging them into your mixer), you can’t use their mics.
- Turn the “Aux 1” knob on each input channel a microphone is connected to to around the noon position. Turn all the other Aux knobs all the way counter-clockwise.
- Put the “Aux 1 Post” button. (So that as you adjust the volume of a microphone, it gets adjusted both on the PA and in the Zoom.)
- Connect Main Out L from your interface to an input channel on your mixer.
- On the mixer channel you plugged the interface into, turn the “Aux 1” knob all the way counter-clockwise. This is critical.
- Turn the “mix” knob on the interface all the way clockwise to “PB”.
- Connect “Aux 1 Out” on the mixer to Input 1 on the interface.
- Connect the left main output on the mixer to the input for the venue’s PA, or to your own PA system.
- Set gain and levels for each input appropriately on the mixer, which is outside the scope of these instructions but involves making sure that each input peaks at about the same place on the signal meter when in use.
- As with scenario 1, adjust the gain on the audio interface so that it’s just below where it starts clipping.
- Notes from scenario 1 about the presenter’s laptop/connection also apply here.
Other considerations:
Make sure there’s enough time for setup and tear-down. If you’ve booked the venue for 8am and they won’t let you in at 7:30, give yourself a little extra time for setup and don’t schedule anything before 8:30. If they want you out of the room at 6pm, your schedule should end at 5 or 5:30, depending on how much you have to pack up.
You can get multiple angles or cameras in a room using old smartphones as extra cameras. Just sign in to the meeting from the device and connect only to video. As the host of a webinar, you can spotlight multiple cameras for all participants; I’m not sure if you can do that for regular meetings.
For an all-day event, have two people who know how to use the equipment so they can take shifts.
Have a laptop connected to the meeting as a regular participant, with headphones, so you can see and hear what other participants are seeing and hearing. There will be a delay between what you hear in the room and what you hear on Zoom, and the echo can be distracting; over-ear headphones can help with that.