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[4String]

I have been asked to take the lead on sourcing and installing a new sound system in our church.  I am looking for some advice on how to proceed to select the supplier.  

I arranged a seminar about church sound and the pastor etc. now understand:
a)that you need to use a firm that is well experienced in church sound and
b)that it will be expensive.  (I have taken the position that either you do it right or you don't do it at all) - the presenting vendor provided us with a ballpark price.

I see 2 alternatives:
a) identify three competing vendors and ask for competitive quotes (to be candid - neither myself, nor anyone in the congregation, has the expertise to evaluate anything beyond the $ at the bottom)
OR
b) evaluate the potential vendors and select the one that you feel understands the church needs, will do a good job, has experience/references in similar sized venues, and will be there for post install service

I like the second alternative and have permission from the elders to proceed with the project on the basis of selecting a single vendor to work with.

Has anyone else taken this path?  Any comments, pitfalls to avoid, advantages etc.?

Any advice on how to proceed? i.e. selection process?  evaluation process? etc.

Any input is welcome.

Thank you

[Dan Brown]

Exactly where are you located at?  

Myself and others might be able to help you out with reputable companies in your area.

[Trev Belec]

Hi there,
I noticed that you are located in "The Great White North", So are we. Our company, Yake Engineered Systems, is located in Ontario.We are a pro audio company dealing almost strictly with the church industry, in which we have done over 400 churches over the past 18+ years. We work all around Ontario, and have even made a few trips down to the east coast a couple of times. We would be happy to talk to you about your church and the necessary system that you would require. We take the same kind of attitude about any work that we do, that the quality of the system exceeds the need to hit a certain price point, and therefore be forced into sacrificing the ability or quality of the system. We definately enjoy the design and build process a lot better, because then we can address the real needs of the church and work towards that, rather than, be forced into a certain dollar constraint.
If this information is of interest to you, and you would like to follow up with it, please don't hesitate to contact us at your convenience using the info at the bottom of this post.
Thanks for you time,
Trevor Belec

Yake Engineered Systems
180 Edgehill Drive
Kitchener, Ontario
N2P 2C6
(519) 653-8542
(866) 653-8542
info@yakesystems.com
www.yakesystems.com

[4String]

We are located in Burlington, Ontario, Canada

[Dan Timon]

Caveat: I am not an audiovisual consultant, but perform many of those services at my day job. I am not financially tied to any any consulting firms.

Because

Quote:

(to be candid - neither myself, nor anyone in the congregation, has the expertise to evaluate anything beyond the $ at the bottom)

I recommend option c) which you have not mentioned, which is to first hire a skilled audiovisual consultant like Tom Young, who is the moderator for the Church Sound Board.

Why? Because you need an objective, unbiased expert to review your church's needs, design a system that meets your needs, analyze the particular acoustic challenges and needs in your sanctuary, recommend vendors in your area who are competent in providing what you need, and can evaluate the system during and after the installation. When you choose a vendor, you are potentially limiting yourself to the kinds of products he is a dealer for, and you are potentially limiting yourself to the vendor's experience. While many have a great deal of expertise in your kind of installation, some are not as experienced and may be Guitar Center clerks by day, or are not up-to-date on the latest technologies or measurement techniques. Lots of small AV companies do not even know how to properly align the speakers in a sound system. But you will not know this, because any of them will run rings around you, when it comes to talking the audio jargon. It is easy for a techie to appear to be an expert, when he is talking to a non-techie.

Seriously, give Tom Young a PM ( he travels) or find an audiovisual consultant in your area.

Regards,

Dan Timon

[Jay Ballard]

I agree with the post offering Option C.  The best way, especially if you don't have design experience, is to hire an experienced consultant that is not specifically affiliated with any manufacturer.  There are a number of them available throughout the US and probably the "Great White North" as well.  By going with a third party, they can get what is best overall for your situation (your building, technical experience of your operators, project budget, etc.) without being tied to specific equipment they have on their shelf or what is being pushed by their corporate partners.

We are currently entering a building project for a new 3500-4500 seat worship center.  I have 20 years of experience in this business (and actually install and operate systems professionally on a regional tour level) and I am going to hire a consultant.  Having a consultant on board adds some "legitimacy" to the design for your elders.  They are used to having an architect design a building, why not have a consultant design your system?  This system is a major investment of money.  We are supposed to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with.

Remember, you are going to have to live with this system for a number of years.  You want the best you can get in order to bring glory to God.

[alyien]

Hello everyone! As a new comer of this forum, please allow me to share my experience.

Our church hired a consultant from Toronto who is specialized in church acoustic and made purchase decisions based on his measurements, calculations and recommendations. As a result, we have achieved the following:

1. Avoid buying equipment that does not meet our requirement;
2. Avoid some other "experts" or vendors from questioning the effectiveness of the system design;
3. Established an more accurate budget;
4. Minimized the total building cost (very important for any church);      
5. Knowing what we build will definitely work. (The consultant has a guarantee on his work).

Being said that, thought the shopping process, quite a few companies (I mean reputable system builders)we have approached still insisted on their own custom "design" because they want to sell us what they carry and make money on installation!! Having this experience I totally agree with the previous replies suggesting the use of a consultant who is not going to sell you any product!

PS. It may be normal... but the consultant we hired has an unique attitude towards those who think they know acoustic

Allan    

 

[Ivan Beaver]

I will agree with getting a qualified person in to help you.  That may or may not be a consultant (here comes trouble-more on that later).  Ask to be taken to jobs of simular size and worship style as yours that they have done and really talk to the people who not only are in charge, but who also operate the system, about what they think of the system and the people who designed it and installed it.

As far as price we usually tell people to expect the range of $75-125/seat.  This can go up or down-depending on actual needs.

Now here is what I am going to get in trouble about- MAKE SURE that the person who is doing your designing actually takes your needs/wants into account.  As many know I have a real distaste for consultants.  I know Tom Young well, but have not had the opportunity to work with him yet, but am looking forward to it.

Here are some of the issues that I have had with consultant projects.  This may be unusual, but ALL the consultant projects (we don't get that many-maybe 1% or less)that come to us are majorly flawed.  This includes some of the biggest consultant names in the industry.  They include (like the one I got this week) using large diaphram AKG mics as monitors, systems that require a person to hold down the system ON button for the entire service, a church that wanted 8 wireless and no patch bays-but got 6 wireless and $20,000 worth of patch bays, systems in which the main speaker (intellivox) was directly behind the pastor (couldn't get any gain there!), insert unbalanced paths that were 350' long, inserts for channels (gates/comps) that were located in the amp rack at the other end of the building,
paging mics and "local" mics that have no way whatsoever for the customer to adjust the volume (unless they get in the back of the amp rack with a small screwdriver and adjust), not having enough DSP channels for the main cluster, but having 2 channels of DSP for 2 subs sitting right next to each other, and 1 speaker manufacturer telling us should get an award for having the guts (consultant designed) to install a system that was designed for 400' throws in a room in which the back wall was about 80' from the cluster-and what a cluster %@#*% it was!.

I could go on and on and on and---, but you get the point.  I am not saying that all consultants are this way (and I have a lot that are professional friends such as Tom),but I have not had 1 single job to look at that I said was even close to being OK.

Be sure to check out their work by talking to the customers.  DO NOT take their word for it.

By all fairness, there are as many bad design-build firms out there that do just as bad a job, and many consultants have their own horror stories.  I am attaching a piece that I wrote about the issue of design-build VS consultant.

[Dan Brown]

Ivan Beaver wrote on Fri, 06 May 2005 19:02

As far as price we usually tell people to expect the range of $75-125/seat.  This can go up or down-depending on actual needs.

Ivan,
I heard that it should be it should cost as much as your chairs.  With churches putting in those nice theater type chairs now it comes in at about what you said.

Most problems we have had is with consultants that weren't just audio consultants.  They have stuff that they have done in the past and just pull that out again for the next project.  Just finished a project with a headache like that.  Not to much fun

[Dan Timon]

Ivan, you make great points, of course, and I agree with all of them. Nice work on that Word doc-that will be a valuable resource for a lot of people, and I hope that it gets a lot of use in church land. I have seen disasters and successes both in consultant-driven projects and design-build projects. For me, I like to modify the choice to match the needs of the job with the deficiencies of me!

To the original poster: my boss hired me because they needed an unbiased person who had strong familiarity with all aspects of the AV business, from design, installation, repair, procurement, maintenance, project management, to staffing, training, etc. They wanted a Friend in the Business (FITB), to help them make the choices they needed on new AV projects and building, staffing and maintaining an AV department.

You have to find a true FITB, who really knows the business, to help you in this process of designing and integrating a suitable AV system, because you do not have those skills yourself. While I am a permanent full time employee because of how much we do with AV, you just need somebody to help you with the project, and to call up once in a while to advise you about how to solve some kind of technical problem about who should fix this thing. The FITB might actually be the AV Consultant, or he might be the person who hires the consultant of system designer. In any case, the FITB should be the person who walks with you through to the end, and helps you sign off on it when it is completed. But you need a trusted unbiased friend with you in all of the crucial stages of the project, to advise you when there are problems, before they become crises.

The better you are at finding this trusted FITB, when he is not the AV consultant, the more likely you are to find a consultant who will find out what you need, design what you need, and give you the best, most cost-effective system that you need. He can also help you find the above qualities in a design-build firm.

It is critical that you, the FITB, the architect, the AV consultant and the AV designer knows what he does not know. I know, for example, that despite the fact that I own several thousand dollars of audio test equipment, I am not a competent acoustical consultant. I know that I do not know how to repair a TV set. Smaller design-build firms and consulting firms will both take jobs that they are not best suited to take, and one of the most important jobs for the FITB is choosing and evaluating the firms for fitness to do the required job-to make sure that they know what they know.

Since Architects employ Consultants, they bring the consultants into the project whenever they want, and because architects do not have expertise about your AV system or do not want to have their design compromised by something that is not important to them, the AV System may be severely compromised as a consequence. And the consultant cannot blame his boss to his face, so you are stuck with delays or extra cost or not gettingwhat you need. In the other method, an AV design-builder is hired by you, and typically you bring him in too late into the project because the Architect will say he is not needed yet, and your AV system may be severely compromised. The compromises often involve bad acoustics, high ambient noise, inadequate or improper power, or inadequate hanging points for speakers and screens, sun control and lighting control, equipment cooling or inadequate wire paths. Your FITB will know all this, so at this early meeting with the architect, the person who designs the project will be there with your FITB.


I fear I have not answered any questions, but I am passionate about the subject because I have seen too many unnecessary project failures. I especially dislike it when it is the Lord's money that is wasted, or the Lord's work compromised.

Regards,

Dan Timon

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