Mackie had the right idea when it added a compressor to its V3 line, understanding that this was desirable for the growing field of digital content creators. With audio on a webcast, you have to assume that the viewer’s ability to turn up their speakers is very limited, so if you want the viewer to be able to hear properly, your audio needs to be mixed within a much smaller range. This gives you a much wider volume range before your audience struggles to hear what the presenter is saying. The reason is that your PA speakers are much more powerful than laptop speakers, and venue show levels are generally louder than what a typical laptop can reproduce. In the venue, you have a much wider acceptable audio range than you do on a recording.

Normally, I prefer to have some control over the levels of each signal. If you are controlling the soundboard, you can utilize one of your soundboard outputs for your webcast audio. Now is the time to start considering audio for the live stream. Up until this point, I have only been focused on the audio for the venue.

Soundboard to switcher studio