For new volunteers
Start Here
New to the booth? Read this once. Ten minutes, and you'll know enough to be useful.
First, relax
You are not going to break anything.
The console is a computer. Every setting you change can be changed back, and the whole desk gets saved as a scene you can reload in about five seconds. The worst thing a wrong setting does is sound bad for a moment. That's it. Nothing you touch on this desk costs money to undo.
So poke at it. Turn things and listen to what happens. That's genuinely how everyone learns this.
Two things to be careful with, and only two:
- Volume. Big fast fader moves in a full room are jarring. Move slowly.
- Phantom power (+48V). Mute the channel before you switch it on or off. It makes a loud pop, and it can damage certain microphones. More on phantom power →
Everything else is fair game.
What the job actually is
Strip away the gear and your job is three things:
- Get each source into the console at a good level.
- Make it sound clear — not muddy, not harsh, not feeding back.
- Send it where it needs to go — the room, the musicians' ears, or both.
That's the whole gig. The console is just a big box of tools for doing those three things thirty-two times at once.
What the X32 is
It's a digital mixer. The important thing to understand — the thing that makes it learnable — is this:
Every channel works exactly the same way. The kick drum, the pastor's mic, and the laptop playing tracks all run through an identical chain of processing, in an identical order.
Learn one channel and you've learned all of them. That chain is the backbone of everything on this site:
- Source
- Gain
- Low-cut
- Gate
- EQ
- Compressor
- Fader
- Sends
- Main
Don't worry about what each word means yet. Just know that when you set up any channel, you're walking left to right through that line. The full walkthrough →
The five things that matter most
If you remember nothing else on your first Sunday, remember these — roughly in order of how much they'll save you.
- Set the gain first, and set it right. Gain is how much the console amplifies a microphone at the input. Get it right and everything downstream is easy. Get it wrong and no amount of knob-turning will rescue it. It's the single highest-leverage thing you do. How to set gain →
- The sermon mic is the most important channel of the morning. People will forgive a muddy guitar. They will not forgive not hearing the message. Know which fader it is without looking, keep it clear and consistent, and keep it feedback-free. Spoken word settings →
- Click and guide vocal never go to the room. If the band runs to a click track, that click and any guide vocal go to their in-ears only — never the main speakers. Check it every single week. It's the classic mistake, and the congregation notices immediately. Tracks, click & pads →
- Watch for feedback before it happens. Feedback is a mic hearing a speaker and the loop running away. It usually announces itself with a ringing tone before it screams. If you hear that ring, pull the offending channel down now and ask questions after. Feedback →
- Save your scene. When it sounds good, save it. When you're done, back it up to a USB stick. A scene is a snapshot of the whole desk, and it means next Sunday starts where this one ended instead of from scratch. Scenes & backup →
How to use this site
There are two ways in, depending on why you're here:
Learning it properly? Start with The Guide and read it in order. It explains what every part of the channel does and why, then gives you starting settings for every instrument and voice. It's written to be read start-to-finish.
Standing at the console right now with a problem? Don't read anything. Go straight to Troubleshooting if something's wrong, Quick Reference if you need a number, or Sunday Playbooks if you're working through setup. Those pages are built to be scanned in fifteen seconds, not read.
Every page links to the pages next to it, so you can always follow the thread further if you want the why behind a step.
A few words you'll hear
You'll pick these up fast, but here's a head start:
- Gain — how much the console amplifies a mic at the input. Set once, per source.
- Fader — the sliding volume control. This is what your hand rides during a service.
- Channel — one input (one mic, one instrument) and its strip of controls.
- EQ — tone controls. Turning specific frequencies up or down.
- Compressor — evens out loud and quiet so a source stays consistent.
- Gate — an automatic mute that opens when someone actually plays or sings.
- Monitors / IEMs — what the musicians hear on stage, in wedges or in-ear buds.
- Scene — a saved snapshot of the entire console.
- DCA — a master fader that controls a group of channels at once.
What to do next
Before your first Sunday, read The Guide — at minimum Part 1 (Foundations) and the channel walkthrough. An hour on the couch beats an hour of panic in the booth.
On your first Sunday, work through Before Sunday: setup & line check. It's a checklist. Follow it top to bottom and you'll have a working mix.
When something goes sideways — and it will, for all of us — Troubleshooting starts with the symptom, not the theory.
And find whoever runs sound now and ask to shadow them for a week. Nothing on this site beats standing next to someone while they do it.
Welcome to the team. The fact that you're reading this at all says you'll be good at it.