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[Taylor Phillips]

I've been running sound for a weeknight bible study/worship service for young singles and college age in my area for some time now.  We've usually only had a worship leader with a guitar and maybe a backup singer and djembe until just now when they've been able to put together a full band - electric drum kit(not my choice, but it's there), bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, two vocals.  Where my question comes is during sound check/rehearsal when the room was empty - there was a noticeable difference in volume when the rest of the band came in after the intro to one song with just the worship leader and acoustic.  It had a nice effect, but when everybody came in there was almost no noticeable difference when the rest of the band came it, and thus the song didn't seem to have the energy that it had 20 minutes earlier.   I wanted to bring up the other instruments more, but I didn't really have room to.  I'm wondering if it was the result of a loud stage during rehearsal that was absorbed by all of the people in the room during the service or some other phenomenon?  I don't think I was hitting the limiter in the speaker processor, but I have no access to it, so who knows.  Output meters on the LS9 were peaking at -18, channels peaked at -12.  Most of the faders were above the 0 mark.  I don't have hard SPL data, but it was too loud for casual conversation, and quiet enough to communicate with the guy doing slides without raising my voice very much.  Pastor thought it should be louder.  Volume on stage came from just two wedges needing to be heard by 5 musicians.  Main speakers are 2 Danley SH100's with one TH112 sub - all flown.  The ceiling's only about 12 feet high - room seats around 250, we had a little under 100 there.  Mix position is on the back wall, up 18 inches under a lower ceiling.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

I've been running sound for a weeknight bible study/worship service for young singles and college age in my area for some time now.  We've usually only had a worship leader with a guitar and maybe a backup singer and djembe until just now when they've been able to put together a full band - electric drum kit(not my choice, but it's there), bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, two vocals.  Where my question comes is during sound check/rehearsal when the room was empty - there was a noticeable difference in volume when the rest of the band came in after the intro to one song with just the worship leader and acoustic.  It had a nice effect, but when everybody came in there was almost no noticeable difference when the rest of the band came it, and thus the song didn't seem to have the energy that it had 20 minutes earlier. 

If I understand the long winding narrative, you've just discovered that adding a goodly number of people to a nearly empty live room changes its acoustics quite profoundly. It makes it less live and more dead. That is well known to many of us.

People are actually among the most effective sound absorbers known. Thnk of them in sitting mode as 120-190 pound sacks of thin mud sitting about 2 feet above the floor and standing about 4 feet tall and nicely spaced. If we could just figure out how to hang them on the walls and ceiling and keep them there when we need them! ;-)

[Taylor Phillips]

Sorry for being long winded - I wasn't quite sure how to word things and it just got long  Anyway, I've always known people in the room make a big difference, but I wasn't expecting to effect the mix that much.  With just the guitar and singer, it wouldn't be as loud when everybody was there, but it didn't affect the relative volume of the worship to his guitar.  I done a few shows elsewhere with acoustic drums, piano and/or amps on stage where I had to turn those up after people show up, but I didn't have any of those here - and the difference was more noticeable.

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

Of course the mix will change.  It's a dynamic relationship between stage sound and PA sound.  Things that have their own amplification and things that use PA only will change in differing degrees once the butts hit the seats.  Amps sitting on the floor will be absorbed a tad more than sounds coming out of elevated PA speakers over the heads (and bodies) of the audience.

And don't forget any monitor sound added into the equation.  It's your job to balance it all out.  So "git to it"!!!!   And have fun.

[chuck clark]

I've run into the same thing with some installs. System is loud when room is empty with sound waves bouncing around and stacking up on top of each other (resonant nodes of room) then when room fills up, bounce gets soaked up by bodies and the nodes are suddenly nowhere to be found! The difference can be a real surprise. The cure is 2 fold. You will need more rig if your truly out of headroom and adding some reverb can restore a bit of the "sustain" or "secondary" or "bounce" energy.
It's caused me to coin a new saying. "The Greeks figured out amphitheaters some 4000 yrs. before our lord was born, you'd think a drifting clue would have hit the average "architect"/club owner/pastor by now. (let alone sound system installer!)If your gonna want live music in a place, gee, think we should give a thought to acoustics???" GOOD LUCK with THAT miracle! Ha!
Chuck

[John Fiorello]

So, it's been a week, what did you get with your dB readings in rehearsal vs. live?


JF

[Gustav Hedelund]

There's also some other parameters considering church sound.

We had an old lady always un-attaching the xlr's to the drum microphones, when she was cleaning the church on weekdays. She could be pretty imaginative and change which cord to un-attach.  So, can you really be certain some guy in the church wasn't turning something down? Could be the accountant sitting by your DSP, that sneaky bastard

Also, often before a meeting, the band sits down to pray, often with words and thoughts like: "let the focus be on God and not on me as a musician.
 As being a christian, musician and having performed a lot during worship I know what happens. You get calm, focused and your dynamics is very much steered by you listening to the whole crowd. That is your job as a worship musician, to lead the crowd in their worship, not playing the balls out of your guitar as you may do a little more during soundcheck, since that will maybe be your only time to be a little more expressive depending on what the pastor has to speak about this sunday.

So, that in addition to acoustics, you pretty much have it. (or some output bus, or someone having installed speakers in parallell with the FOH system with a nice little passive volume knob in the pastor's office)

// Gustav

[Taylor Phillips]

So, it's been a week, what did you get with your dB readings in rehearsal vs. live?


JF

This week I averaged about 100dB, C-weighting, slow response, in rehearsal, went between 94-97 during the service at FOH, I'd guess about 35-40 feet from stage.  Anyway, the difference wasn't near as dramatic this week.  I was actually able to give the drummer a monitor this week, and I think that helped with the stage volume, and kept the volume in rehearsal coming from the PA and not stage. 

[Jean-Pierre Coetzee]

This week I averaged about 100dB, C-weighting, slow response, in rehearsal, went between 94-97 during the service at FOH, I'd guess about 35-40 feet from stage.  Anyway, the difference wasn't near as dramatic this week.  I was actually able to give the drummer a monitor this week, and I think that helped with the stage volume, and kept the volume in rehearsal coming from the PA and not stage.

At that level I'd be blowing the drivers out of our M2D's and probably getting complaints form a hundred people a minute. You should practice mixing at 90 average and peaking near a hundred. You'll be less deaf in ten years and your muso's won't ask for that much more volume in ten years. If your system is set up right you don't need damaging SPL levels to get loud sound.

You might want to re-evaluate your mix and maybe ask the muso's to use less level in the monitors. Try aux fed subs, this can bring a lot of clarity to your mix depending on your system setup. Don't pump up the bass when the people come in either, you will stop the old lady in the front seats' pacemaker with too much bass.

80 Db/SPL-A is plenty to set up a mix in. A note for the future aswell, paragraphs are nice.

[Guillermo Garcia]

Besides the obvious sound-absorption effect of the people filling your room, the difference between mixing acoustic drums and a digital kit may very well be why you are hearing such a radical difference here, and not so much in previous experiences.
When I run sound for a traditional line up using acoustic kits and regular guitar/bass amps I do my best to keep the stage volume low and keep it from battling with the FOH, pointing the amps away from the crowd and whatnot (when you find an amateur drummer that is willing to use a plexi shield, you let me know!). But the natural sound of the drums and amps still leak outside in a bar-sized room, even if you take all measures to prevent it, and the sound of live drums is much harder to be absorbed. I've had to run sound for a band going ALL direct: digital drums, digital POD-like amp emulators going direct for the instruments. It was a bliss to mix, since I had absolute control of both Stage and FOH mixes... but the difference between empty and full room was HUGE, since no source sound was to be heard anywhere.

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