Five Ways to Improve Your Sound System

Churches are known for having bad sound.

This is especially true of smaller churches without a paid technical staff. This bad sound can be the result of bad equipment, good equipment that is improperly used or just a lack of caring about how things sound. This is really too bad.

When someone comes to church and leaves exhausted because of really terrible sound, the church has done them a disservice. And, they’re unlikely to return. They may not even be able to articulate why they didn’t like it, but if you dig, you may discover they just couldn’t hear.

With that in mind, below are a few simple suggestions that can go a long way toward making the church-going experience a better one.

Flatten it out

The best thing about this tip is that it’s not inexpensive, it’s free. Very often, after months of mixing from the same scene or board setup, you’ll find far more EQ or compression than needed, EQ on the LR buss that really isn’t required and gain structure that is way off. Ideally, you run a baseline show file or scene that resets the desk to a known good state each week, but if you pick up where you left off last week, zero it out once in a while. We’ve seen consoles with every gain knob at full cut and they wonder why it sounds so bad. Zero it out, and start over clean.

Have your Sound System professionally calibrated

We remember visiting a church to look at their system some years back. They had a 31-band equalizer between the mixer and the amps, and every single band was at -15 dB. Every. Single. Band. For even “better” sound, they also had an 8-band feedback eliminator in the chain that was also at full cut on every band. As you may imagine, it sounded amazing. And by amazing, I mean terrible. When I inquired, they said the speakers were too loud so they turned down the EQ to make it quieter.

If that’s your idea of how to calibrate a system, it’s time to bring in a pro. If you don’t recognize the incredible amount of sarcasm in the previous paragraph, it’s time to bring in a pro. Or, if you’re not sure how to set up a crossover, time align subs to mains or make the delays seem completely transparent, it’s time to bring in a pro. We know many guys who can extend the life of a less than ideal system by simply calibrating it properly. This gives the church time to save money for a properly designed and installed sound system.

Train your audio engineers

For some reason, very few churches want to do this. We’re not sure why, maybe it’s ignorance. There seems to be a lack of understanding on the part of the leadership on just how hard it is to put together a good mix. Pastors have asked us to  come to their church (during the week) and “dial in their mix so the volunteers can just recall it every weekend.” While it is true we can create a baseline file that would give them a good starting point, it still has to be mixed. Mixing is a weird blend of art and science and if your people don’t know what they’re doing, you’re never going to get good results.

How is it that a church is willing to spend $50,000 to $100,000 or more on a new system or console but balks at spending a few thousand dollars to bring in a top-notch pro to train their team? We’ve been asked to fly half-way across the country, spend a weekend with a volunteer team and train them. We are more than happy to do so and gave them the cost (about $3,000 including travel). The pastor sighed and said, “Hmmm, we budgeted $500.” Needless to say, we didn’t take them up on their generous offer.

Replace broken or damaged equipment

A friend was rather unhappy about the sound of their speaker system. After hearing it, his displeasure was not unfounded. It sounded terrible. One day he decided to do an investigation. He sent pictures of the low-frequency drivers with torn cones and the high-frequency drivers were both completely blown. This may come as a shock, but it’s tough to dial in a great mix with a set of speakers that are blown. What they really needed was a new sound system designed for the room, but didn’t yet have the funds. However, for a few hundred dollars in new components, they were able to begin producing with the entire frequency range. Mixing on blown speakers is more common than you think it is.

Have the Sound System re-hung

Sometimes, a church will have a good collection of equipment for speakers, but they are installed improperly. Occasionally, there are too many speakers in a room—yes, that can cause more problems than it solves—and taking some down will improve sound dramatically. This is another example of having a trained professional come in and evaluate the system.

One caveat to this, however; re-hanging the wrong system for the room will still result in the wrong system for the room. It may be a case of throwing good money after bad. Sometimes it’s better to bite the bullet and have the entire system overhauled with new gear than spend more on bad. This is situation-dependent and a qualified professional will help you sort it out.

Not all of these solutions are what some might think of as “inexpensive”, or “free”. This is true because high-quality sound costs money. The larger the room, the larger the price tag. However, people come to your church to hear the Gospel. Shouldn't the church be obligated to make it as easy as possible to hear? We suggest that each church make a high-quality sound system a priority.

Originally posted on ChurchTechArts