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[Frank DeWitt]

This is said to be what was on the table at Woodstock

It was feeding 12,000 Watts of McIntosh amplifiers!

The mics were custom built from Shure parts and later became the Shure SM58

[Jeff Foster]

It was feeding 12,000 Watts of McIntosh amplifiers!

That's just crazy.  We've got almost that much amplifier power in our 550 seat auditorium.  To think that they did thousands and thousands of people (outdoor) with only 12000 watts is crazy.

The mics were custom built from Shure parts and later became the Shure SM58

I knew sm58's were old, but I didn't think they were that old.  I thought they were designed in the 70's, well after woodstock.

[Kent Thompson]

edit: I noticed that the forums compress the width of the pictures without compressing the height so its a little skewed.
 The sound side its slightly out of focus. I will try and get a better picture Tuesday at practice.
 The lighting and media side.

[Frank DeWitt]

I knew sm58's were old, but I didn't think they were that old.  I thought they were designed in the 70's, well after woodstock.

Shure says 1967 (Before Woodstock)  Interesting, what came first?

I wasn't there.

Frank

[Justin Bartlett]

This is the kind of thing that I find fascinating.  Woodstock is remembered mostly positively, and you never hear anyone complaining about the sound quality.  Based on that picture, it looks like the entire sound "console" fit onto a 4' x 5' table.  Nowadays, we complain when our control surface is too small or have anything less than 96 inputs at FOH.

I think too many engineers have gotten away from the fact that this should always be sound "reinforcement" where we fill in only what is needed.  We don't need to close-mic (and often multi-mic) every single instrument on stage.

I'm going to respectfully disagree, at least in part.  I think our job is to go for the "best" sound we can - according to whatever standard we're using, or whatever the band/worship leader (in the case of a church) wants, or according to whatever the expectations are.  If that is best served by using an 4-channel mixer, with no EQ and no outboard, driving speakers from the 1970s powered by 150-watt amplifiers, then so be it.  But I don't think that's usually the case.  And I think whether we "need" to close-mic every instrument and drum on stage is the wrong question.  Of course we don't "need" to.  We don't "need" to have a band at all.

But does the event better accomplish its goals with a band of talented musicians?  I think the fact that we have said band on stage means we have answered that question in the affirmative.

Does that band sound better with modern equipment properly deployed and operated?  Again, many of us think it does.

So I think the proper question is not whether we "need" to do things a certain way, but whether doing those things enhances the rest of what we're trying to accomplish.

And as far as I'm concerned, if it sounds good, it is good. 

[Jeff Foster]

I'm going to respectfully disagree, at least in part.  I think our job is to go for the "best" sound we can - according to whatever standard we're using, or whatever the band/worship leader (in the case of a church) wants, or according to whatever the expectations are.
<snip>

And as far as I'm concerned, if it sounds good, it is good. 

I don't disagree with you at all.  There certainly are cases where the audience expects, or the worship leader wants everything a certain way.  Sometimes meeting that goal requires close miking or at least area miking everything on the stage.  This is certainly true in a 5000 seat venue where the people in the back simply wouldn't hear everything if we didn't mic it.  However, my point is more towards the smaller churches who think they need to mic everything just because that's what the big church up the road does.  The sound engineer has a very important job, but he is not part of the band.  The sound engineer should not be 'making' sound.  He/she should be using the tools at his disposal to allow the band on stage to sound the best through the sound reinforcement system.

I'm sure they used what they did at woodstock because that's what was available at the time.  If they held that festival nowadays, you'd likely see a Midas XL8 at FOH and multiple columns of speakers running up near the million watt mark.  My point isn't that we should always do it "small", nor is it that we should always do it "big".  My point is that we should keep in perspective that we don't need the latest and greatest to make our respective services sound good.  Woodstock was a huge event that was very successful with a small sound system.  We, as engineers need to keep that in mind and work to let the music and spoken word shine through, regardless of the equipment.

Granted, we all enjoy the cool gadgets and playing with the toys.  Heck, that's why we're all on this forum, and that's why I started this thread.  We can certainly learn from each other and see what someone else may be doing to adapt that to fix a need at our church.

It's really just a pet peeve of mine.  If I hear my staff talking about "if we only had this" or "only had that", I have to stop them and remind them why we do what we do and ask them to think about what that newfangled gadget would help us do that we can't already do.  Granted, we've got a really nice system now, but when I started mixing, we had a 5 channel system.  Church was still church.  People's lives were changed - and that's why we do what we do.  The rest is just fluff.

[Tommy Peel]

I don't disagree with you at all.  There certainly are cases where the audience expects, or the worship leader wants everything a certain way.  Sometimes meeting that goal requires close miking or at least area miking everything on the stage.  This is certainly true in a 5000 seat venue where the people in the back simply wouldn't hear everything if we didn't mic it.  However, my point is more towards the smaller churches who think they need to mic everything just because that's what the big church up the road does.  The sound engineer has a very important job, but he is not part of the band.  The sound engineer should not be 'making' sound.  He/she should be using the tools at his disposal to allow the band on stage to sound the best through the sound reinforcement system.

I'm sure they used what they did at woodstock because that's what was available at the time.  If they held that festival nowadays, you'd likely see a Midas XL8 at FOH and multiple columns of speakers running up near the million watt mark.  My point isn't that we should always do it "small", nor is it that we should always do it "big".  My point is that we should keep in perspective that we don't need the latest and greatest to make our respective services sound good.  Woodstock was a huge event that was very successful with a small sound system.  We, as engineers need to keep that in mind and work to let the music and spoken word shine through, regardless of the equipment.

Granted, we all enjoy the cool gadgets and playing with the toys.  Heck, that's why we're all on this forum, and that's why I started this thread.  We can certainly learn from each other and see what someone else may be doing to adapt that to fix a need at our church.

It's really just a pet peeve of mine.  If I hear my staff talking about "if we only had this" or "only had that", I have to stop them and remind them why we do what we do and ask them to think about what that newfangled gadget would help us do that we can't already do.  Granted, we've got a really nice system now, but when I started mixing, we had a 5 channel system.  Church was still church.  People's lives were changed - and that's why we do what we do.  The rest is just fluff.

Not to disagree with you, but close miking/DIing everything does work quite well in a small church setting. The church band I work with, before I came along, only ran vocals and acoustic guitar through their PA(Mackie suitcase variety). Since then we've started miking or using DIs one everything and running through a Mackie Onyx mixer; the sound quality has improved significantly since we started doing it this way. Not to say it's for everyone but it's been working great for us.

[Frank DeWitt]

It's really just a pet peeve of mine.  If I hear my staff talking about "if we only had this" or "only had that", I have to stop them and remind them why we do what we do and ask them to think about what that newfangled gadget would help us do that we can't already do.  Granted, we've got a really nice system now, but when I started mixing, we had a 5 channel system.  Church was still church.  People's lives were changed - and that's why we do what we do.  The rest is just fluff.

Like every church we have had to figure out how much is enough.  It is different for every church.  I visited a church that is right near a huge college and wants to bring in a lot of new people.  They have a full time tech staff and there "Booth" is two floors and has it's own kitchen and restroom.  Does it work for them?  YES.  There media pastor sits in the booth and communicants with people watching the service on live on line from there dorm.  He has led people to Christ from his keyboard.  This particular group is drawn in by a high level of production.  They have thousands at each service.

the church I run sound for is a 250 person church.  We don't have or need that budget.  What we have decided is that our tech should not be a distraction. from the service.  Example,  Like many churches we use a worship software and good projector to show song slides and sermon notes.  If we used a overhead projector or if we went back and forth between a "Desktop" and slides that would be a distraction.

If we had 8 screens each with a different image and I-mag in the middle for a 250 person church that would be a distraction. 

Sound reinforcement is the same.  The sound needs to be high quality done right, never any feedback.  The congregation needs to be able to here the worship team as they sing along. Do they need to here the drums? yes.  Do we need a mic on the top and bottom of each tom? no.  (We have two mics for the kit.)   It works, and it doesn't drive people away.

We had a man say at his baptism that he came because he was curious. He stayed because he enjoyed the music and singing.  After a few months he understood Gods love and Gods plan for him and why he was really there. 

So the question  Was the gear worth it for this guy?

"God is always extravagant, but never wasteful."  That was said to me by a man from Maine US who went to the middle east where he met a woman from Australia who lead him to Christ. 

Our job is to figure out what is extravagant, and what is wasteful.

[Tommy Peel]

So the question  Was the gear worth it for this guy?

"God is always extravagant, but never wasteful."  That was said to me by a man from Maine US who went to the middle east where he met a woman from Australia who lead him to Christ. 

Our job is to figure out what is extravagant, and what is wasteful.

+1

Sent from my Milestone X using Tapatalk 2

[Jared Koopman]

  The sound engineer has a very important job, but he is not part of the band. 

In a Church setting I actually disagree with this. (please dont read this as saying you are wrong, just stating my view)

Mixing is my instrument and an integral part of the band. Not us vs them. But we are one team working together for a collective goal.  Yes the musicians are responsible for crafting the sound they are looking for in a song, but it is my job as the sound guy to make sure that translates to the audience in the best way possible.

Hope that makes sense.

Jared

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