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[Kevin Tracy]

Good evening everyone,

My name is Shin and this is my first post on the forums although I have been browsing these forums for quite a while and have learned a great deal about church sound mixing. I've joined the military since and my church has not found an alternate sound engineer. I'm also not very experienced so I have not been able to get a lot of muddle out of the whole system.

Would it be viable to find an audio/sound engineer in the NYC area to come and at least work with the worship team and set a baseline EQ? Every vocal/instrument has their own channel so things wouldn't be changing from week to week. I was wondering if it was worth the money and time to get someone to come in and just work with them and basically almost leave the settings the way they are except for volume levels for worship.

I apologize if this comes out a little confusing so if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. One issue we've always been having is that our monitors seem to be overpowering the speakers near the front of the sanctuary but I haven't been able to find a solution to that except buying a personal monitor system, which our church currently does not have the funds for. Thank you everyone.

God Bless,
Shin

Hi I may be of assistance.  Where exactly are you located ?

Kevin Tracy

[Taylor Phillips]

Shin,
I agree with the others that having someone come in and set things once is not the best idea.  What is not a bad idea, in my opinion, is if you find a person who would be good for that, have them show you what they'd change, how they'd change it and why they change and then change it yourself, and keep track of the reasons for and methods of the changing.  This way you'll have some knowledge of why and how some things were done if something changes down the road.

As for the drum kit, there are a few things I would suggest that should help it a bit.  First, get it out of the corner and away from any walls.  If it has to be next to a wall, put something to absorb the sound between the wall and the kit.  Also, get your drummer to use hot-rods or brushes instead of heavy, thick hickory sticks like so many like to use.  I measured the differences using hickory sticks, maple sticks, and hot rods a while back on my drum kit at home.  I was able to play at 90dBA with the hickory sticks, but it took some effort.  90 was easy with the maple sticks, but 86 took some effort.  With the hot-rods was an easy 82dBA.  This was on a standard sized birch kit.  I didn't have any brushes to test.

[David Wright]

Hello Shin
I have seen many church's in your position. I am one of those guys that get asked to help a church get their sound program fine tuned and bring their team up to the task of running a clear service. The first thing to do is get together the entire worship team and urge a couple of them to rotate weeks of running sound. The best sound person is a musician with an ear for music. The tech side of sound can be learned but a natural ear for sound is hard to teach. Also recruit some High school kids in your youth group that are musicians. I was one of those kids at my church when I was 15. Same thing as the adults, they can learn the tech side as they go.
One thing to do is have the worship team scale back  the on stage complexity until the sound program is ready to handle a full amplified worship band . Start out by having your lead worship team member that will be running the sound play a CD through the sound system. choose something  that is close to the style of worship music the team plays. Then have the person with an ear for music adjust the main speaker EQ buy starting out at zero gain on all frequencies, normally in the middle of the EQ. Then have your person pull down  the far right high frequencies and maybe some of the far left frequencies. much of the time you can follow a curve starting with the lows around -4 or -5 DB and steadily increase the mid frequencies around 1kHz - 2.5kHz  to a level around +3 or +4 DB. Then follow the curve down until you get around 5 or 6 kHz.
Now how the curve will be determined by how the CD sounds in the room. The goal is to make the music sound natural and not enhanced with high bass or high pitch tones. That will give you a starting point.

The first roll of the sound system is to reinforce the sound in the room, not hear everything through the speakers, especially in smaller church's. When the Pastor or teacher is speaking you want it to sound like the person is speaking loud enough everyone can hear. If you or someone on your worship team has a smart phone you can download a sound level meter app for free.. The meter can help you evaluate how loud things are. In a church that is small where the distance from the back of the room is around 50feet from the stage the DB level should not be louder than 75db when people are in the room. Note the sound of the room changes when the room is filled with people. When people are in the room and starting to gather play CD with some prelude music and fine tune the main EQ a little. Also in practice try to fine tune the channel EQ for the speaker pulpit. Again the goal is that the person sounds natural If the  person sound muffled pull down the low frequency and push the mid tone on the soundboard. Don't mess with the main EQ anymore at this point. The fine tuning from this point on is done from the mixer EQ on each channel.

The above procedure is a starting point.

It would be a good idea to talk to a local sister church and see if they have a sound man that could help
get your team pointed in the right direction.

I am in San Diego, so I'm a little to fare to stop by but if there any questions I might be able to help with you can email me.

Your Brother in Christ
David Wright
[email protected]
http://www.dwministry.org

[Frank DeWitt]

Recently I was at a nearby church that is about 4 times our size and just getting into their first digital console. I sat through a fairly miserable-sounding service thinking that with about 2 hours and $20 I could make the system sound about 5 times better. Of course they are too proud to ask for help. Doing what you are asking, which is to go through and voice all the inputs and outputs of their new console, and explaining why I'm doing what I'm doing and leaving some documentation that I wrote about it would probably be a big help to them.

Not in the Detroit area, are you? ;-)

Most people have trouble asking for help, but if you offer to stop by for there worship team practice and sway a few ideas I bet you are welcome.

Any church sound guy has a automatic sky box pass at our church.  We might not take your advice but we will certainly listen to it.

[Jared Koopman]

Most people have trouble asking for help, but if you offer to stop by for there worship team practice and sway a few ideas I bet you are welcome.

Any church sound guy has a automatic sky box pass at our church.  We might not take your advice but we will certainly listen to it.

hmm could be fun, road trip to Franks Church! 

I also believe that networking with other local Churches is a great idea. Another church just might have someone that is ready, willing and able to help out.

Jared

[Caleb Dueck]

What about a reputable company?  Why hope another end user may or may not have better ideas, when you could talk to someone who designs and installs and tunes these systems for a living?  We have to redo/fix so many DIY attempts that could have been avoided, and cost saved,  if they had called rather than DIY (them or another church). 

For example, if we are meeting with a church, and there are immediate tweaks needed, we'll fix on site without additional cost. 

Everyone is an expert I guess, except the few trained who do it professionally who deliver excellent results. 

[Frank DeWitt]

hmm could be fun, road trip to Franks Church! 

I also believe that networking with other local Churches is a great idea. Another church just might have someone that is ready, willing and able to help out.

Jared

We have hosted other sound guys on a Saturday afternoon We invited every one we could contact and asked them to bring a favorite piece of gear for show and tell.  I think every one there learned something I ended up buying a couple of mics based on what I learned.

February is a good time because everyone needs to get out by then.  This year I'll make the road trip.

[Jared Koopman]

What about a reputable company?  Why hope another end user may or may not have better ideas, when you could talk to someone who designs and installs and tunes these systems for a living?  We have to redo/fix so many DIY attempts that could have been avoided, and cost saved,  if they had called rather than DIY (them or another church). 

For example, if we are meeting with a church, and there are immediate tweaks needed, we'll fix on site without additional cost. 

Everyone is an expert I guess, except the few trained who do it professionally who deliver excellent results.

This works too, but also has the expectation of cost. I am not saying anything is wrong with that, but I can see that being an issue for some Churches.

Again it goes back to networking, both with other Churches as well as reputable companies. That is what I was getting at.

[Mac Kerr]

Hello Shin
I have seen many church's in your position.

Please go to your profile and change the "Name" field to your real first and last name as required by the posting rules displayed in the header at the top of the section, and in the Site Rules and Suggestions in the Forum Announcements section, and on the registration page when you registered.

Mac

[Malek Pallie]

There are usually three basic approaches to your situation:
 

• Start training your people.  Books, videos, classes, online resources, etc.
• Hire someone to help set up the system, provide training and perhaps run sound, at least until others progress to where a 'hired hand' is no longer needed.
• Contact other churches in the area and hope there may be some qualified people who are willing to help get your system optimized, provide some training and whatever other assistance they may offer.

And in many cases you might end up employing some combination of these.
 
One other comment, while you may be able to reduce the interaction of the audio system with the room, you may have situations that cannot be 'fixed' with equalization and that will require addressing the acoustics.

+1

This is good advice. I have worked myself out of several regular church gigs by training volunteers to take over mixing duties from me. I usually have to go in and at least tune the system and set amplifier gains and etc appropriately (and sometimes redeploy and upgrade systems to get it sounding descent), but I have been pretty successful with training volunteers to take on the routine operations. I would suggest finding young musicians in your congregation to volunteer for the training, and then hire a good engineer for a few weeks/months to train them.

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