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Before You Commit to a Sound and Mixing Setup: A Checklist

A practical list of questions to work through before choosing microphones, a mixing approach and monitoring for a news or live studio, so the decision rests on your room and your crew.

Callum Whitby · 18 October 2026 · 7 min read

Start with the room, not the equipment

Before anyone talks about microphones or desks, walk the studio and listen. Clap once near the presenter position and note how long the sound hangs in the air. Hard walls, glass backdrops and bare floors all add reflections that no mixer can fully remove later. I come from the lighting side, and I have lost count of the times a set looked wonderful and sounded like a stairwell, because nobody checked until the first rehearsal.

Write down what the room does when everything is switched on. Air handling, lighting rigs, monitors and gallery equipment all hum, buzz or tick. If you can hear a fan from the desk position with the studio empty, the microphones will hear it too, and they will hear it louder than you do.

Ask the engineer who will mix the show to attend that walk-through. Hannah Doyle, our audio engineer, always asks to stand where the presenters will sit before she says a word about kit. What she hears in those ten minutes shapes everything that follows.

Clap test at each presenter position
Note every constant noise with the studio running
Check for glass, bare walls and hard floors
Bring the person who will actually mix

Know what your show actually needs to capture

A two-presenter news desk and a standing live show with guests moving around are different jobs. List the voices you expect at any one moment, where they will be, and whether they stay still. A desk with fixed seats can use lavalier or desk microphones placed once and left alone. A roaming presenter needs radio packs, spare batteries and a plan for what happens when a channel drops.

Think about the unplanned moments too. Will a guest join halfway through the programme? Will a reporter come in by phone or remote link? Each extra source is another fader, another level to watch and another possible fault, so count them honestly now rather than discovering them on air.

Be realistic about your crew size. A setup that needs two people riding faders is a poor choice if only one operator is rostered. Choose the simplest arrangement that covers your real running order, then add complexity only where the programme demands it.

Maximum number of voices at once
Fixed seats or moving presenters
Remote contributors and phone-ins
How many people will operate the desk

Microphone choice and placement questions

Once you know the room and the show, ask what each microphone has to ignore as well as what it has to pick up. A lavalier close to the chest hears mostly its wearer, but it also hears rustling clothing, jewellery and the odd cough. A desk or boom microphone sounds more natural but hears more of the room, including the person sitting next to the speaker.

Ask where each microphone will sit, who is responsible for fitting it, and how long that takes. Presenters who are new to the job often clip a lavalier too low, too close to a collar or under a scarf. A short, agreed routine for fitting and checking saves minutes before every broadcast and spares everyone a rushed fix.

Have a spare for every critical position and know exactly how to swap it. The most common live fault I hear about is not a dramatic failure but a flat battery or a loose connector. A plan for those small problems is worth more than an expensive upgrade.

What each microphone must reject
Who fits and checks it, and when
A spare ready at each key position
Windscreen or cable fixes for loose connectors

Mixing: who rides the faders and by what rules

Decide before the first rehearsal what a good mix means for your programme. Dialogue clarity usually comes first, with music, stings and effects sitting underneath. Agree a target loudness range with your producer so the mix does not drift between bulletins, and so that adverts, packages and live speech feel consistent to the listener.

Think about automation and presets carefully. A saved scene for a standard two-presenter desk can speed up setup and reduce mistakes, but it can also hide a problem if someone assumes it still fits when the seating has changed. Keep presets simple and label them in plain words that anyone on the crew would understand.

Plan for the person who is new on the desk. If only one engineer understands the layout, your show depends on their health and diary. A short written guide, with photographs of fader positions for each programme type, makes cover shifts far calmer and keeps levels steady.

Agreed loudness range with the producer
Dialogue first, music and effects beneath
Simple, plainly labelled presets
A written guide for cover operators

Monitoring and communication in the gallery

You can only mix what you can hear accurately. Check that the speakers or headphones in the gallery show the same balance you will find in an ordinary living room. Monitoring that flatters the sound hides hiss, harshness and low-frequency rumble, and those problems appear later on screens and speakers you cannot control.

Ask how the engineer will hear the presenters on the floor and how the floor will hear the gallery. Talkback, earpieces and cue signals need to be tested at normal levels while the studio is busy. A producer's instruction that arrives late or muffled is as much an audio fault as a dropout in the programme feed.

Allow time to line everything up before the programme goes live. A proper line-up, with tone, a voice check from each position and a quick listen to every source, takes only a few minutes and removes most of the nervous guesswork that otherwise sits in the gallery.

Speakers or headphones you trust
Talkback tested while the studio is busy
Voice check from every position
Tone and level line-up before going live

Budget, time and what to settle in writing

Finally, set out what you are spending and what you are getting for it. Equipment is only one part. Allow for cabling, stands, spares, a rehearsal day and the time it takes the crew to get comfortable. A modest setup, properly tuned and well understood, usually outperforms a larger one that nobody has had time to learn.

Put the decisions on paper: microphone positions, mixing rules, loudness targets, spare arrangements and who is responsible for each task. A single page that everyone has seen avoids arguments on the day and makes it easier to repeat the result next week with a different crew.

If any answer on this list is still a guess, go back to it before ordering anything. It is much cheaper to stand in the empty studio and ask one more question than to rework a set that has already been built around the wrong choice.

A good audio decision rarely begins with a product. It begins with the room you have, the voices you must carry, the crew who will operate it and the standard your producer expects. Work through these questions in that order, write down the answers, and test them with a real rehearsal. If the list leaves you with a clear, simple plan that your whole team understands, you are ready to commit. If it does not, you have saved yourself an expensive surprise.

About the author

Callum Whitby

Lighting Designer

Callum designs lighting plans for news sets and live stages, balancing look, safety and speed of rigging.