Five Ways to Improve Your Sound System (Before Replacing It)

Five Ways to Improve Your Sound System (Before Replacing It)

Did you know that churches often do not have great sound, and have no idea why, or how to address it? Sometimes it is a church without a paid technical staff or other available resources. Sometimes it is aged or inferior equipment. Sometimes it is poor design or deployment of systems. Sometimes it is a user error.

When you go to church and leave exhausted because of a distracting audio experience, that means that you have been poorly served and some evaluation is in order. Pleasing and engaging audio is an important and substantial part of a congregant or guest experience. We see poor audio continue unchecked because it is difficult to articulate by the average person, so other more attractive priorities in the organization can easily overshadow it.

Here are five ways that you can try to improve your sound system, before considering replacement.

1. Flatten It Out

We’ll start with a free suggestion… start over from scratch on your mixing desk. Over months of mixing, you’ll typically find a gradual buildup of saved EQ or compression on channels and groups, perhaps EQ on the LR bus, or gain structures that are out of balance. Ideally, we recommend that 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, try zeroing it out occasionally. Oh, the stories we can tell about improving a system’s performance by zeroing things out and simply rebuilding the mixing desk baseline.

2. Get Your System Professionally Calibrated

We recently visited a church to evaluate and troubleshoot their speaker system. We discovered a 31-band equalizer between the mixer and the amps, and every single band was at -15 dB. Every. Single. Band. The 31 frequency bands that had been intended to shape the system to match the space had been misunderstood and misused. Additionally, we discovered a feedback eliminator in the chain that was also at full cut on every band, thinning out every channel passing through it. As you may imagine, the church was unhappy with its system and frustrated. In that frustration, they had made system-wide adjustments on their own that were counter-productive.

Maybe it’s time to bring in a pro. Our team can often extend the life of a less-than-ideal system by recalibrating it properly so that the church has time to save money for a well- designed and implemented solution.

3. Seek Out Training for Audio Engineers

It is difficult to put together a good mix. We sometimes get a request to come in during the week to help a church dial in their mix so the volunteers can just recall it every weekend. Baselines are good, but it still must be mixed with skill. Live sound is both art and science, and your results will most often reflect your level of investment into the training and development of your teams.

It is good stewardship to invest a modest amount to bring in a pro to train their audio team after investing significantly in a sound system. We get excited when we are asked to fly across the country to spend a weekend with a volunteer team and train them. If you have an established relationship with an AVL integrator, start there. Otherwise, give us a call and we can talk through what you are looking to accomplish in your training initiative.

4. Replace Broken or Damaged Equipment

Odds are high that your church has some equipment in use that is near or past end-of-life. Recently, a friend called, unhappy about the performance of his sound system. His own investigation led him to open speaker cabinets, to find low-frequency drivers with torn cones and blown high-frequency drivers. What this friend really needed was a new sound system designed for his space, but the funds weren’t in place yet. However, after a modest investment and some professional advice, they were able to get up and running again.

5. Get the Sound System Professionally Re-Deployed

We see this more we’d like. A church will have a good equipment, but the system has been installed improperly. This is another time where it is a good thing to have an established relationship with a reputable AVL integrator who can a) install systems correctly the first time and b) extend the life of your existing systems, up to and including re-deploying your speaker system for optimal performance.

Keep in mind that re-hanging the wrong system for the room is still the wrong system for the room. This more invasive option should include trusted experts who can help you determine if you would be better served re-deploying your existing system or investing in a full-scale upgrade.

Quality results require investment. The larger the room, the larger the price tag. We encourage you to count the cost of not having a quality sound experience in your gathering spaces, to seek out advice from experts, and maintain a stewardship mindset and you seek to amplify the Gospel in your community.