X32 Livestream Mix: Build a Broadcast Bus That Sounds Full Online

The room sounded great on Sunday. Then you watched the stream back and the vocals were shouting, the drums were somewhere down the hall, and the bass guitar was missing. Nothing is broken. You’re sending the stream a mix that was built for the room.

This guide shows how to build a dedicated broadcast mix on a bus on your Behringer X32 or Midas M32. It covers why the main mix sounds thin online, how to set the bus up, and the three common ways to get it out of the console and into your stream.

Why the Main Mix Sounds Thin Online

In the room, a lot of what people hear never goes through the PA. The drum kit is loud on its own. The bass amp and the stage monitors spill into the seats. So whoever mixes front of house only adds what the room is missing, which usually means lots of vocals and very little drums or bass.

Your stream hears none of that acoustic sound. It only gets what’s in the console mix. Send it the main left/right and your viewers get the room’s “fill-in” mix without the room, and it sounds thin and vocal-heavy. Some rooms have the opposite problem, but the cause is the same: one mix can’t serve two very different audiences.

In my video on reliable livestreams, I called out “the stream mix not representing the sound of the worship team” as a whole other problem, separate from having no audio at all.

One Bus, One Job

The X32 gives you 16 mix buses and 6 matrices. Mix buses are groups of channels, the digital version of the aux knobs on an old analog board. Matrices are mixes built from your buses and main mix. Buses usually feed your wedges and in-ears, but nothing stops you from giving one of them the job of feeding the stream.

My typical layout puts mix buses 1–6 on outputs 1–6 and the main left/right on outputs 7–8. Those six buses cover stage monitors, livestream audio, subwoofers and lobby speakers, whatever that room needs. For a stereo stream, use two adjacent buses linked as a stereo pair. For a mono stream, one bus is enough.

There’s a lighter option too. You can send the main left/right into a matrix and feed the stream from that. It gives the stream its own level control, but it still carries the room’s balance. A dedicated bus is the one that actually fixes a thin stream, because every channel gets its own send level.

Build the Mix

Put your faders on the bus

On the console, press Sends on Faders, then select the bus you’re building. Your channel faders now control how much of each channel goes into that bus, not the main mix. Press it again to get back to normal mixing.

If you have a computer, this is much easier in X32-EDIT. Click a channel, open the Sends tab, and set its level into each mix bus. That’s also where you choose whether each send is pre-fader or post-fader. I walk through X32-EDIT’s routing tabs in In Depth Routing Training X32-EDIT / M32-EDIT.

Pre-fader or post-fader?

This is the most important decision on the page, so understand the trade-off before you pick:

• Post-fader sends follow your house fader. When the pastor’s mic gets pulled down after the sermon, it drops on the stream too. That’s the safer choice when one volunteer mixes both the room and the stream.
• Pre-fader sends ignore the house fader, so fader rides for the room never touch the stream. The catch is that someone has to ride that mix all service long, including pulling mics down when they’re done.

Either way, the send levels set the stream’s balance, so you can give viewers more drums than the room gets. Mutes are the other thing to check. In X32-EDIT, the color legend across the bottom of the routing window lists tap points like “pre fader + mute” and plain “post fader”, so whether a mute carries through depends on the tap. Don’t assume. Mute a channel and watch the bus meter to confirm before the service.

There’s also a tap setting on Routing → Out 1–16, where the bus itself gets assigned to an output. Keep that one set to post-fader so the bus master fader controls the stream level.

What changes in a broadcast mix

Start by pushing all of the stream sends up to roughly where the house faders sit. Then listen on headphones and adjust:

• Bring up what the room was giving you for free. That’s usually drums, bass and anything with a loud amp on stage, because the room was covering them.
• Follow the stage. Who’s leading this song? Who jumped in on harmony? A stream mix goes stale fast if nobody is watching mic changes.
• Keep the click and cues out. I turn off a click channel’s main assignment so it physically can’t reach the main mix, even if the fader goes up. Check that it has no send into your stream bus either.
• Include your playback. Walk-in music and ProPresenter video audio need to be in the bus. At the church I served, we played pre-service music on the stream from an iPad playlist. We made sure it wasn’t copyrighted music and never streamed Spotify.
• Set reverb by ear on headphones. The room adds no reverb for viewers, so judge the effects return by what sounds right in your ears, not by what the house mix is doing.

Protect the stream with a limiter

In X32-EDIT, I like to load a Precision Limiter from the effects rack and assign it to the stream output. Everything headed to the stream goes through the limiter first, so a surprise shout or a loud cymbal is less likely to clip the encoder. The rack can also put a stereo EQ on the main left/right, right before the audio heads to the speakers.

Routing on the X32 comes down to choosing a source and sending it to an output. Your broadcast bus is just one more source, so give it a clear path out.

Get the Bus Out of the Console

This is where most broadcast mixes break. For the XLR, AES50 and Card outputs, getting a bus to leave the X32 takes two separate steps, and it’s easy to do one and forget the other.

Step 1: Assign the bus to an internal output

Go to Routing → Out 1–16. These are the console’s 16 internal outputs. You’re choosing which mixes are available to send anywhere, and the sources include the main left/right, mix buses 1–16, matrices 1–6 and direct outs. Assign your stream bus to one of these outputs, or two for stereo.

Step 2: Send that output to a real connector

Now pick where it physically comes out:

• XLR tab. This sets what feeds the console’s physical XLR outputs. The full-size console has 16 and the Compact and Rack have eight. Set the block to your internal outputs (for example, Out 1–4 and Out 5–8).
• Aux Out tab. The quarter-inch aux outputs can take mix buses, matrices and the main mix directly, so this path doesn’t need Step 1.
• AES50 A/B tabs. These send outputs to the XLR outputs on a connected stage box.
• Card tab. This sends sources to the 32 channels of the expansion card, which means USB to a computer by default, or Dante if you’ve upgraded the card.

Watch for this mistake on the XLR tab. If you pick Local 1–8 or AES50 A 1–8 as the source, you’re sending inputs straight to the outputs. A mic comes out of the jack with no mix, no EQ and no volume control. Whatever goes in comes straight back out. Always choose your internal outputs.

Option A: Into a switcher or encoder

The simplest path is an XLR or quarter-inch output into the audio input on your video switcher or streaming encoder. When I ran production at a church in Canton, Ohio, our broadcast mix left its console and went straight into the ATEM switcher. We watched the levels on the multiview so we could ride them in real time.

Option B: Over USB to a computer

The X32’s default card is a 32-in, 32-out USB audio interface. Plug it into a Mac and it shows up in System Settings → Sound as X-USB. On the Card tab, send the block of internal outputs that holds your stream bus (for example, Out 1–8) to the card. Then pick the matching channels as the input in your streaming software, if it lets you choose input channels.

Two limits apply. The computer’s system audio only plays out on channels 1 and 2. And USB connects to only one computer, so you can’t feed a streaming computer and a presentation computer over the same cable. For that, a Dante card lets several networked devices send and receive audio. I show the USB side in detail in MultiTrack Recording & Playback | Behringer x32.

Option C: Into ProPresenter on the same computer

If the computer running your lyrics also streams, you have to avoid a loop. ProPresenter sends videos and music to the console, the console sends the stream mix back to ProPresenter, and if ProPresenter sends that back out, you’re in trouble. Here’s the setup from the version shown in my video:

1. In ProPresenter Settings → Audio, change the channel count from 2 to 4.
2. Under Main, open Routing, hit Clear, and send only ProPresenter channels 1 and 2 to your output device. Channels 3 and 4 must not go anywhere.
3. On the Inputs tab, turn off the audio on your camera inputs and create a separate audio input from your interface or X-USB.
4. Route that audio input to channels 3 and 4 only. A mono source should feed both 3 and 4.
5. In the capture settings, open Routing and send channels 3 and 4 to the stream’s left and right. If you pick 1 and 2, viewers only hear ProPresenter’s own playback.
6. Save a stream preset and a disk recording preset so nobody has to rebuild this on Sunday.

The input’s mode setting includes Auto Off. When a foreground video plays, the live input turns off and the stream takes its audio from the video. Also make sure ProPresenter’s playback channel is in your broadcast bus, so video audio goes to the mixer and comes back into the stream.

No Audio on the Stream? Check These in Order

• Is the console on, and is anything muted? Check channels, DCAs, the stream bus master and any mute groups. A low bus level can be just as bad as none, because viewers turn everything up and still can’t hear.
• Does the bus reach a connector? A bus assigned on Out 1–16 still has to be picked on the XLR, AES50 or Card tab (or assigned directly on Aux Out) before it leaves the console. On the console’s Out page, an asterisk warns when an output isn’t assigned to any local analog connector. That’s expected if it only feeds USB or a stage box.
• Is an input going straight out? If you hear one mic with no mix, the XLR tab is pointed at Local or AES50 inputs.
• Echo or doubled audio? You have a loop. Check ProPresenter’s Main routing for channels 3 and 4.
• Stream hears videos but not the band? The capture routing is set to channels 1 and 2 instead of 3 and 4.
• Sound in only one ear? A mono source is feeding only one stream channel. Send it to both.
• Click track on the stream? That channel has a send into the stream bus. Turn it off.

When One Bus Isn’t Enough

A bus mix works well for a volunteer running both room and stream. Once you have someone free to mix the stream all service, the next step is a separate broadcast console. At the church I served, a dedicated broadcast console in the control room got every input over the Dante network from the same stage boxes, and its main mix fed the switcher.

If you’d rather not build all of this routing by hand, ShowBuilder can set up a dedicated stream bus, or main left/right through a matrix, and send it to XLR, aux or USB. You get it all in a loadable show file along with a printable patch sheet.

The Whole Thing in One Picture

• The main mix is built for the room. The stream needs its own mix.
• Build that mix on a bus (or a stereo pair) with Sends on Faders or X32-EDIT’s Sends tab.
• Choose post-fader if one person mixes both. Choose pre-fader if someone rides the stream.
• Keep the click and cues out, and make sure walk-in music and video playback are in.
• Get it out in two steps: Out 1–16, then XLR, AES50 or Card. (Aux Out can take the bus directly.)
• In ProPresenter, stream input goes on channels 3–4, output stays on 1–2, and capture uses 3–4.

Related Videos

• How to Route Audio on the X32/M32 | Internal vs External Outputs Training
• Setup LIVE Stream Audio IN and OUT of ProPresenter
• MultiTrack Recording & Playback | Behringer x32
• For the rest of a stream that doesn’t fail on Sunday, see Be Setup for Success with a Reliable LIVE Stream.

Keep Going

• Behringer X32 routing and configuration for church audio
• X32 USER input and output routing
• Why your church livestream audio sounds bad
• ProPresenter live stream output: graphics and audio

More training is on the YouTube channel: youtube.com/@CrazyAmazingDesigns.