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[Mark McFarlane]

We are using a Roland digital mixer, but not the M-480. It doesn't have built-in delay times for outputs.

Strange, what make and model digital mixer doesn't have delays on the outputs?  Its basically a free feature.

[Mark McFarlane]

JBL speaker angle - they are angled just slightly down due to the nature of how they sit on the pole mounts. We actually also started angling them inward a bit a few months ago toward the middle of the room.

I'd be wanting an angle more like 15-20 degrees, not just the slack in the pole.  Also, FWIW, the pole-to-cup mount shouldn't have that much slack that the speakers tilts down at all...

[Jason Lucas]

Were it up to me, I would have hired a professional consultant to come in before we even moved into the building. I would have had them treat the room and design a sound system for us and then gone and bought that system right from the get-go.

Unfortunately that decision was not up to me.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to convince them to buy a DSP unit.

We’ve turned the speakers in quite a bit, if I can figure out the exact (or at least approximate) angle I’ll come back and post it, but I highly doubt that they are blasting the walls at all anymore (that picture I posted is a bit out of date).

I hadn’t considered putting the sub under one of the tops. I’ll make the suggestion.

The digital mixer we use is the Roland M-400 V-Mixer. It can set EQ on AUXs and Main Outs. I’m currently using it to apply a 45Hz high pass filter on each of the main outs.

We use the sub because the JBLs don’t have nearly enough “thump”. Their SPL below 80Hz leaves a lot to be desired. The worship pastor and band leader like the sub.

The center speaker doesn’t sound nearly as clear or smooth as the JBLs. I don’t know what brand they are, oop or aap or something. They are currently being powered by a QSC RMX 1450.

I’ve suggested to the leadership that we bring in a consultant but they don’t appear to think it would be worth the money.

One thing to note: we are renting this space, we don’t own it. So we are limited in how many physical changes we can make to the room. If we owned it we’d have torn the whole thing down and rebuilt because we hate the floor plan. We are hoping to either buy and rebuild or move ASAP, but with how small our building fund is still I have no idea how long that will take.

[Don Davis]

If you decide on external DSP I would recommend a DBX Driverack 480 or 482 for 4 ins and 8 outs per Dick's suggestion. The difference being the 480 has a screen and the 482 does not, you program it through a PC. They can be found pretty reasonably used.

[Jason Lucas]

If you decide on external DSP I would recommend a DBX Driverack 480 or 482 for 4 ins and 8 outs per Dick's suggestion. The difference being the 480 has a screen and the 482 does not, you program it through a PC. They can be found pretty reasonably used.

I doubt I'd even be able to convince them to buy a $500 unit, much less the $2000+ units like you're describing.

[Mark McFarlane]

I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to convince them to buy a DSP unit...

...
We use the sub because the JBLs don’t have nearly enough “thump”. Their SPL below 80Hz leaves a lot to be desired. The worship pastor and band leader like the sub.

The center speaker doesn’t sound nearly as clear or smooth as the JBLs. I don’t know what brand they are, oop or aap or something. They are currently being powered by a QSC RMX 1450.


One thing to note: we are renting this space, we don’t own it. ... We are hoping to either buy and rebuild or move ASAP, but with how small our building fund is still I have no idea how long that will take.

If you don't get any budget, I'd start by tilting the JBL's in and down and moving the sub up even with the tops.  You can test this using pre-recorded music and get the minister/band leader to listen.  Walk all around the room with them during the tests listening for where the bass and vocals get flabby and louder and softer.  They may like how the subs sound on-stage, but they need to hear what the congregation is hearing to understand the problem.

You're dealing with a fundamental physics problem (the time arrival differences), you either need the DSP or physical movement to partially fix the problem.  You can't completely fix it because you are stuck with speakers in opposite corners of the room.  As Dick already suggested, moving the speakers in closer together should improve the sound some, aesthetics aside. 

Another suggestion is to try is to take the center speakers out of the system altogether.  If they sound bad, and you can't get them to sound good, and they are introducing a 'path distance' delay (comb filtering) problem: turn them off.  If they came with the building they may be 'old' and perhaps the surrounds have deteriorated or some drivers are blown,  you might be able to recone them or replace the drivers to fix them.  Or turn them off, but I wish you could make them sound good and use them for vocals....

You can get fire-retardent covered acoustic absorption panels  that hang like pictures.  One medium-sized nail hole per panel. You can even build them yourself (1*2 frame BEHIND the panels, not covering the sides) at a fairly reasonable cost using rock wool or something like Owens Corning 703,  and using a special fire-rated fabric (someone on the east coast sells the fabric mail order, I forget the company).  I use these panels in my rehearsal space and it makes a huge difference but you need a fair amount of wall coverage, which is why I would start by heavily treating the back wall.  Here's a few pics of some 2*4 panels in my space http://www.arkoserecords.com/Studio/tabid/60/Default.aspx

This will give some absorption of the mid-high frequencies and should improve inteligability. The bass problem would be very expensive to fix with treatment in a rectangular hard box room. 

It's hard to say exactly where to treat without complete room plans but I'd start with a dozen 2*4 panels across the back wall and the front of the balcony.  The fabrics are available in multiple colors and can actually be decorative.

Maybe Brad or someone else can chime in and say how much coverage you would need to make a difference, I've not tried this in a big space like yours.  You might need 50 or 100 panels to make much impact....

FWIW, my church services are held in a cinder-block school gym (seats about 500 per service) and the walls are treated with 'something' from 8' above the floor up to the ceilings, all around.  That's about 70% coverage of the walls and would be very expensive to do with rock wool or OC 703.  It actually sounds pretty good in this room. For a gym it is amazing.

[Jonathan Johnson]

I’ve suggested to the leadership that we bring in a consultant but they don’t appear to think it would be worth the money.

Let me get this straight. No one in your church is qualified to analyze the situation and make a recommendation, so they just plan to try this and try that until you get it to work right? How much money do you plan on spending on The Wrong Solution^(TM) until, by chance or blessing, you get it right? A consultant will be well worth the money.

(Please, don't take this personally -- it's directed at your leadership, not you.)

The other mistake is setting the budget before you know what you need. It's understandable that money is tight, but a good consultant will be able to give you a three-phase approach: addressing immediate needs (repair and tuning of the system), short-term improvements (upgrading components), and long-term planning (knowing what to get as you grow and your needs expand). Once you have this plan, then you can look at the finances and figure where you're going to get the money. In the long run, it will be cheaper to hire the consultant at the get-go. And when you do get to the point where you're going to build your new facility, get an acoustic engineer involved at the dream stage, before the architect even puts pencil to paper (or mouse to pad, as is the case nowadays).

There is no shortage of good consultants in the Portland, Oregon market. Rose City Sound, for example, has been around a LOOONG time and they've got a good reputation. Also, talk to Joel down at Apple Music Row (Pro Sound department), he can probably recommend some folks who can work with you.

[Jason Lucas]

Let me get this straight. No one in your church is qualified to analyze the situation and make a recommendation, so they just plan to try this and try that until you get it to work right? How much money do you plan on spending on The Wrong Solution^(TM) until, by chance or blessing, you get it right? A consultant will be well worth the money.

(Please, don't take this personally -- it's directed at your leadership, not you.)

The other mistake is setting the budget before you know what you need. It's understandable that money is tight, but a good consultant will be able to give you a three-phase approach: addressing immediate needs (repair and tuning of the system), short-term improvements (upgrading components), and long-term planning (knowing what to get as you grow and your needs expand). Once you have this plan, then you can look at the finances and figure where you're going to get the money. In the long run, it will be cheaper to hire the consultant at the get-go. And when you do get to the point where you're going to build your new facility, get an acoustic engineer involved at the dream stage, before the architect even puts pencil to paper (or mouse to pad, as is the case nowadays).

There is no shortage of good consultants in the Portland, Oregon market. Rose City Sound, for example, has been around a LOOONG time and they've got a good reputation. Also, talk to Joel down at Apple Music Row (Pro Sound department), he can probably recommend some folks who can work with you.

Preaching to the choir here. Like I said in an earlier post, if it were up to me, I'd have called a consultant in right from the get-go.

[Brad Weber]

We’ve turned the speakers in quite a bit, if I can figure out the exact (or at least approximate) angle I’ll come back and post it, but I highly doubt that they are blasting the walls at all anymore (that picture I posted is a bit out of date).

You seem to have a common dilemma of a left/right speaker arrangement, particularly if the speakers used were selected without consideration for their coverage.  If you 'cross' the speakers so they both cover the same audience area then neither one probably covers the entire listener are so you don't get stereo for everyone but you do get combfiltering for mono sources.  If you aim the speakers to each cover half the listener area and especially if you try to minimize overlap in their coverage, you get combfiltering and poor intelligibility.  Without being able to change the speakers or space you will just have to balance the tradeoffs.  But that is why I think it would be good to keep the center array for many vocal sources, provided it can be made to function properly.

I hadn’t considered putting the sub under one of the tops. I’ll make the suggestion.

Moving the sub could have several benefits but be aware that the low frequency response of any speaker can be affected by its location relative to nearby boundaries such as walls and ceilings.  This is a generalization but you typically want a subwoofer very near to or a minimum of 8'-10' from a wall or ceiling, a distance between those may adversely affect the response due to reflections from the nearby surfaces.

The digital mixer we use is the Roland M-400 V-Mixer. It can set EQ on AUXs and Main Outs. I’m currently using it to apply a 45Hz high pass filter on each of the main outs.

We use the sub because the JBLs don’t have nearly enough “thump”. Their SPL below 80Hz leaves a lot to be desired. The worship pastor and band leader like the sub.

Depending on the slope of the filter, 45Hz may be a bit high for a 'subsonic' filter.  I don't doubt that the sub adds some low end but a single HPR181i adding that much low end compared to a pair of PRX535s, especially if they have the EQ set to 'boost', would surprise me.  This may relate to the position factor noted above.

The center speaker doesn’t sound nearly as clear or smooth as the JBLs. I don’t know what brand they are, oop or aap or something. They are currently being powered by a QSC RMX 1450.

Maybe the OAP Q or Engineered series, http://www.oapaudio.com/?  Unless there is something wrong with them then typically a high pass filter and some EQ could help.  Unlike a true LCR system where you want all three channels to sound the same, if you used the system as left/right stereo for music plus center mono for speech then you may want to voice the center channel specifically for speech intelligibility and the left/right specifically for music.

I’ve suggested to the leadership that we bring in a consultant but they don’t appear to think it would be worth the money.

One thing to note: we are renting this space, we don’t own it. So we are limited in how many physical changes we can make to the room. If we owned it we’d have torn the whole thing down and rebuilt because we hate the floor plan. We are hoping to either buy and rebuild or move ASAP, but with how small our building fund is still I have no idea how long that will take.

Hopefully they may at least gain the view that there could be value to involving such a party from the start when you do address a new space.

[Jason Lucas]

Depending on the slope of the filter, 45Hz may be a bit high for a 'subsonic' filter.  I don't doubt that the sub adds some low end but a single HPR181i adding that much low end compared to a pair of PRX535s, especially if they have the EQ set to 'boost', would surprise me.  This may relate to the position factor noted above.

The reason I have it that high is because according to the manual that's as low as the frequency response gets on the HPR, or the JBL.

Maybe the OAP Q or Engineered series, http://www.oapaudio.com/?  Unless there is something wrong with them then typically a high pass filter and some EQ could help.  Unlike a true LCR system where you want all three channels to sound the same, if you used the system as left/right stereo for music plus center mono for speech then you may want to voice the center channel specifically for speech intelligibility and the left/right specifically for music.

That definitely looks like the right brand, although I have no idea which model. I'm going to spend this weekend experimenting with the center speaker some.

[ProSoundWeb Community]