REALITY CHECK  |  Live Sound International, September 2026

Tips and tricks for doing well in a growing market.

By Carl Stewart

As an audio engineer who does mostly corporate events, I find that the small events outnumber the large ones by a significant margin. I'm defining “small” as less than 250 attendees. Some can be as small as 25. The experts are predicting a steady rise in the number of such meetings.

In a Business Travel News article, author Dennis Vilovic said, “A recent estimate from Custom Market Insights projected the media and entertainment industry would reach $1.753 billion by 2032 with a 12% compound annual growth rate. I believe this will largely be due to the rise in volume and accountability of smaller meetings.”

In a small meetings blog on Amadeus-Hospitality.com, author Isabel Garza states, “Small meetings are becoming a significant force in the events industry.” She adds, “According to the Q4 2023 Hospitality Group & Business Performance Index results, an impressive 70% of events booked were for groups with 200 or fewer attendees, underlining the growing importance of small meetings in the market.”

For those of us who do corporate events, this is significant. I do my share of large general sessions, medium-size events and small ones, the small ones being the majority for me. However, all of them require the same expertise, technical skills and careful attention, even though they require varied approaches and methodologies. And I still command a very respectable day rate for the small events.

01

The large general sessions usually involve multiple hangs of line array speakers, including a row of mains and a row of delays. In addition, there are foldback (monitor) speakers, front fills and subwoofers.

The medium-size events may also involve line arrays, but the line array stacks might be ground supported instead. Very often, though, the events are small and involve four point-source speakers across the front. Depending on how deep the room is, delay speakers may or may not be used.

I find it useful to have a template for the mixing consoles that I see commonly provided on these events. They are the same basic template regardless of the size of the event, because corporate events tend to have the same basic framework. That framework consists of a presenter or a series of presenters, often with a discussion panel and Q&A (question and answer) portion.

I create the templates using the offline editors for various consoles and I keep them on a thumb drive that lives in my kit. This is because I often don't know which console I'll be using until I walk into the conference room.

You would think that advance communication would be a standard practice, given its vital nature for preparation and smooth execution, but unfortunately the opposite is often the standard in my experience. Having a basic template saves me a ton of setup time. As far as I know, the only digital console frequently used for corporate events that does not have an offline editor is the Allen & Heath QU series, which I see from time to time.

Lets talk about template inputs. We know that there will be wireless microphones. My template usually has eight, and they're labeled as ‘RF 1,’ ‘RF 2,’ etc. My CL5 and QL5 templates have 12 RF channels. I insert a HPF (high pass filter) into each microphone channel, typically around 120 Hz, in order to avoid muddiness and rumble.

There is often a hardwired lectern microphone, which is often mistakenly referred to as a “podium” microphone. (What’s the difference? A podium is something that you stand on, whereas a lectern is something that you stand behind.) These microphones typically require phantom power, so I make sure I activate it in my template. I fine-tune the equalization for these microphones on site because there’s always a difference in acoustic environments.

Other inputs include video playback A and B (or 1 and 2), my personal laptop computer for walk-in and walk-out music, and a VOG (‘voice of god’) microphone that I keep handy in case there’s an emergency and I need to make an announcement that the room is being evacuated or we’ve been instructed to shelter in place.

For the larger events involving a show caller, I’ll add a switchable mic for the show caller to make announcements and record introductions for presenters, such as “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome vice-president of product development, Miss Alice Meriwether.” When requested, I record them and line them up in my cue playback software. The show caller will refer to these introductions as something like ‘I.R. 1,’ ‘I.R. 2,’ etc. during the show. The smaller events without a show caller will typically have the current presenter introduce the next one.

It’s not unusual these days to have a presenter in another location having a discussion with the presenter in the room via a conferencing software such as Zoom. This adds another input, as well as a mix-minus output for the off-site presenter. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “mix-minus,” it means that you’re sending a mix to the remote presenter with everything except their own microphone in order to avoid an echo loop.

02

Now let’s talk about outputs. As I mentioned, the main speakers for small events are usually two or four point-source speakers across the front of the room. Some engineers like to do a single home run to one side, and connect the output of that speaker to the input of the speaker on the other side, which is known as a “daisy chain” configuration.

I don’t like to do that because inevitably someone will walk directly in front of a speaker with an open mic, which is a recipe for feedback. With a daisy chain configuration, you have to turn down all the main speakers in order to turn one down, but with a stereo configuration (I run a dual mono signal), I can pan one side down or off in this situation, leaving the other side unaffected.

This is very common in my experience. It also gives me the option, if it’s needed for a more theatrical presentation, to spatially have a sound like a plane, rocket, thunderstorm or galloping horse go from right to left, or vice versa, by panning the signal.

Some engineers like to use matrices for all outputs, including the main L/R send, but I generally like to use the default main outs of the console for the mains and feed everything else with matrices that are fed from the main L/R. That way, I have one more matrix available and when I adjust the main L/R fader, the other outputs follow suit.

If I bring the main L/R fader all the way down, I want the entire system down – I don’t want to be making such adjustments to other outputs separately. But that is not true of foldback speakers, of course. Their purpose in a corporate event is a bit different from that of a musical performance.

I don’t put presenters in the foldback speakers for a corporate event. It’s mainly because they don’t need to hear themselves, but it’s also to eliminate the risk of feedback as they walk on and off stage with wireless microphones. They need to hear video playback, questions from the audience using Q&A mics, conferencing from remote locations and other things of that nature, so the controls (especially level) need to be separated from the house system.

This is why I make the foldback inputs post-fader for corporate events. For example, if I’m slowly fading out some walk-in music, it’s also slowly fading out of the foldback system. Likewise, if I bring down a music playback fader, I don’t want to hear it still going full volume in the foldback speakers or the subs.

Generally speaking, the only two signals going to subwoofers in a corporate setting are music and video playback, so a post-fader setting is in order there as well. If live entertainment is part of the corporate event, I’ll use a different approach for that, of course, and I’ll have the settings for it stored in a scene that’s easily and quickly recalled.

03

Let’s say your template has eight channels for wireless microphones, and the client orders ten, or twelve. Or perhaps the client only needs three or four. So what do you do? Rearrange the whole layout on the first layer? You could, but I have a better tip.

Most digital consoles have a custom layer, and some have more than one. This allows you to rearrange the channel order any way you wish in whatever configuration makes sense to you. All you have to do is add the additional inputs onto your custom layer, which means that although they’re separated from the original six or eight RF channels on your first input layer, you can place them side by side in the custom layer.

For small events, I like to include the output channels in my custom layer so that all of my inputs and outputs are on a single layer. I can see them all at a glance and make adjustments without having to change layers (depending, of course, on the number of inputs and outputs I’m working with and the number of spaces available in the custom layer for a particular console).

In the custom layer for my Yamaha TF5 (Figure 1), you’ll notice that I’m sending signal to the video recording (Aux 1, named ‘Record’) as well as to my second laptop for recording an audio signal using Cakewalk (Aux 2, named ‘FOH Rec’). Recording is not normally requested or required by the client, but it’s something I do routinely just in case it’s needed.

FIGURE 1  Inside the Yamaha TF5's offline editor – a look at the author's custom fader layer which includes wireless mics, lectern, several playback channels, VOG, matrix outputs and record busses.

The TF5 console offers four matrices, which I use for delay speakers (one matrix for left, and another matrix for right), front fills and foldback speakers. I would love to have more matrices for the record feeds, like on a CL5 console which offers eight matrices (Figure 2). Fortunately though, the TF5 has a dedicated sub output that follows the main L/R, eliminating the need for a matrix send to the subs.

FIGURE 2  The author's matrix layer template in the Yamaha CL5 offline editor.

04

Staying busy in this industry depends largely on reputation, and we're only as good as our last gig. I know that when I walk into a conference room, I am Mr. Audio. I'm responsible for everything having to do with sound, and there is no room for error.

I'm very fortunate to work with some of the best A-2s, system techs and audio stagehands in the business. Sometimes, I'm the A-2 working with some of the best corporate A-1s in the business. The end client expects reliability and perfection, as does the hotel liaison who is the contact person for the end client. It's a heavy responsibility, but my knowledge and years of experience give me lots of confidence.

The labor coordinators at the AV companies that hire me know that once the contract is executed, they don't have to think about audio again; it's all on me. Since advance communication is so rare, I have to be able to walk into a room, look at the sound system that they've provided, and make quick decisions about speaker placement, FOH organization, cable paths and so on.

Essentially, I design the system on the fly using the equipment that's available. There's no time for modeling the system in a predictive software program. It is certainly not the ideal way to do things, but more often than not, it's the reality that I'm faced with.

One of the benefits of doing corporate events is that it often pays better than mixing for musicians, weddings and other types of events. Another benefit for me is that I'm often interested in the subject matter, and I'm getting information that attendees are paying a lot of money for. Admittedly, there are times when I'm bored to oblivion because I'm not interested in the subject matter, or it's way beyond my comprehension.

Doing small corporate events may not be as glamorous as mixing FOH for A-list headliner performers with stadium-size sound systems, but I find it very satisfying, somewhat challenging, and it sure beats workin' for a livin'! LSI