Church Shape It

The white line is your EQ curve — the combined effect of all 10 bands, drawn from 20 Hz (left) to 20 kHz (right). The blue fill behind it is the live spectrum of your actual signal.

• Colored dots are your bands — drag one to change its frequency and gain, or scroll on it to change Q.
• A dot sitting on the centerline for High Pass, Low Pass, or Notch bands is normal — those types don't use gain.
• Hover anywhere on the graph for an exact frequency readout in the "Cursor" chip below it.

• Low/High Shelf: boosts or cuts everything above/below the frequency — good for broad tonal moves (warmth, air).
• Peak: boosts or cuts around one frequency — the workhorse for surgical fixes (mud, presence, harshness).
• High Pass / Low Pass: removes everything below/above the frequency — use High Pass around 80–100 Hz on vocal mics to kill rumble and handling noise.
• Notch: a very narrow cut — useful for killing a specific whine, hum, or feedback frequency.

Gain boosts (+) or cuts (−) the band's frequency in decibels. A boost of +6 dB roughly doubles the perceived loudness at that point in the spectrum.

Q controls how wide the boost or cut affects neighboring frequencies:

• Low Q (0.1–0.7) — broad, gentle curve. Good for tonal shaping (shelves, overall warmth or air).
• Mid Q (0.8–2.0) — standard musical range. Suitable for most vocal and instrument fixes.
• High Q (5–18) — surgical notch. Use to target and remove one specific problem tone (e.g. 60 Hz hum, a feedback ring).

• Mix blends your dry input with the fully processed signal. Turning it down from 100% softens the whole EQ curve at once — useful when a curve sounds right in shape but too strong overall.
• Phase Flip inverts the polarity of the processed signal before it's mixed back with the dry signal. Combined with a low Mix setting, this can create narrow phase-cancellation dips — a sound-design trick borrowed from Shape It, not something you'll need for typical church mixing.
• S Solo on a band strip isolates that band so you hear only its effect — even if the band is currently disabled. Solo multiple bands at once to hear just their combined contribution. Click it again to un-solo.

Noise floor is the constant background level captured even when no one is speaking. Lower is better:

• Below −55 dB — quiet room, good baseline.
• −40 dB to −55 dB — acceptable for most churches.
• Above −40 dB — check for HVAC, open windows, or amp hum.

Dynamic range is the gap between your noise floor and loudest peak. Aim for 40 dB or more — the bigger the gap, the cleaner your signal sounds once a streaming platform compresses it.

The Feedback Finder watches for the classic feedback signature: a narrow frequency spike sitting well above its neighbors for a sustained stretch of time — not just a loud moment.

• When it fires, a red banner appears above the Start button with the exact ringing frequency.
• Click 🎯 Notch This to instantly convert your closest band into a tight Notch filter at that frequency.
• If it fires repeatedly at the same frequency, that's usually a room/monitor issue worth fixing physically (mic placement, monitor angle) rather than EQ'ing out every service.

This direction puts Church Shape It before OBS/Audacity in the signal chain — your mic gets EQ'd here first, and OBS/Audacity receive the already-processed audio instead of the raw mic.

1. One-time setup

• Install VB-Audio Virtual Cable if you haven't already.
• Set Audio Input Device above to your real microphone or mixer output.
• Set Audio Output Device above to CABLE Input (VB-Audio Virtual Cable).
• Click Start Processing — your EQ'd signal is now flowing into the virtual cable.
• Output device routing requires Chrome or Edge (uses the setSinkId API).

2. Bringing it into OBS

• In OBS, click + under Sources → Audio Input Capture.
• Set its device to CABLE Output (VB-Audio Virtual Cable) — this now carries your EQ'd signal instead of the raw mic.
• Mute or remove any other source still capturing your raw microphone directly, so you don't hear it twice.
• Watch OBS's audio mixer meter — it should track the Peak Signal meter in this app.

3. Recording with Audacity

• Open Audacity and set the recording device (the microphone-icon dropdown in the toolbar, or Edit → Preferences → Devices) to CABLE Output (VB-Audio Virtual Cable).
• Set the recording channels to 1 (Mono) for a single mic, or 2 (Stereo) if your source is stereo.
• Click the red Record button in Audacity — it captures the same processed signal OBS is streaming, so your recorded file already has the EQ applied.
• Leave Audacity's Software Playthrough off unless you want to monitor while recording — with this app's own "Monitor Locally" toggle also on, you'd otherwise hear the signal twice.

Running OBS and Audacity at the same time? You don't need a second virtual cable — Windows lets multiple apps read from the same CABLE Output simultaneously, so OBS can stream while Audacity records off the identical feed.

This is the reverse direction — instead of EQ'ing your mic before it reaches OBS/Audacity, this taps whatever OBS or Audacity is already outputting so you can QC it: watch the LUFS meter, peak/noise floor, spectrum, and Feedback Finder against your live mix or a played-back file.

Testing OBS's output

• In OBS: Settings → Audio → Monitoring Device, set it to CABLE Input (VB-Audio Virtual Cable).
• Make sure the source(s) you want to check have Monitor and Output (or Monitor Only) enabled in OBS's Advanced Audio Properties.
• In Church Shape It, set Audio Input Device to CABLE Output, then Start Processing.
• Whatever OBS is mixing now flows into this app for analysis — no need to touch the EQ bands unless you want to hear how a curve would sound applied on top.

Testing Audacity's output

• In Audacity, set the playback device (speaker-icon dropdown in the toolbar, or Edit → Preferences → Devices → Playback) to CABLE Input (VB-Audio Virtual Cable).
• In Church Shape It, set Audio Input Device to CABLE Output, then Start Processing.
• Hit Play in Audacity — this app now analyzes whatever's playing back instead of a live mic.

Important: this uses the virtual cable in the opposite direction from the pre-processing setup above. Don't run both setups on the same cable at once — writing processed audio back into the cable you're also reading from creates a feedback loop. If you need both directions simultaneously, install a second cable pair (e.g. VB-Cable A+B) so each direction has its own dedicated pipe.

LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale) measures perceived loudness, unlike peak dBFS which only measures the loudest sample. Streaming platforms normalize audio automatically:

• YouTube / Spotify: target around −14 LUFS integrated.
• Podcasts: typically −16 to −19 LUFS.
• Going louder than the platform target gets turned down automatically — mixing to the target instead preserves your dynamics.

This meter uses a simplified ITU-R BS.1770 K-weighting approximation computed in JavaScript — treat it as a helpful reference, not a certified broadcast-compliance measurement.