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[Caleb Dueck]

Maybe I don't know what I am doing, can you tell me how to do it properly.

The answer is to hire someone, which isn't free.  Acoustical treatment, depending on the room (IE, if not a cathedral), may be required, and isn't free, even if it's "not feasible".  A new system may or may not be needed, which isn't free. 

As soon as the powers that be get over the "it's not free", and that it's not a simple DIY tweak - then you can move toward actually getting something intelligible. 

A good portion of the work I've done over the last 20+ years - is church AV.  Often after a church tries the DIY approach and realizes it doesn't work.

[Doug Jane]

hey, I am trying to setup my speakers levels (SPL levels in my church). I am using an SPL meter app on IPad and trying to match the levels of mains and delays at the point of measurement ( which is deep into the audience at FOH). We have very bad acoustics and room treatment is not an option. I am setting up my mains to 85db SPL at front and measuring the amount of sound drop over the distance ( which is 79db with delay's turned off) and I turn off mains and firing delay's and setting them to be at 79db. It works just fine when I play music through the system but when pastor is talking there is no intelligibilty at the back. How do I need to setup my speakers levels so I don't excite room as much and also reduce the energy at the back so that energy reflected from the back wall is less and also having sufficient level of intelligiblity.

So you have a bad sounding room,and you are attempting to force it with the pa. As with most problems, fix the first problem first.
Engage a good acoustical consultant, and fix the room. I understand that you think you can do it with the pa. You probably cant, and you need to make the people in charge aware of this.

[JamesJudson]

Hi James, you're looking at something that is a portion of a larger beast.  Very Smart People write books about it and charge professional money to do the work on site.  And delay/under balcony/stalls coverage are not the first part of the design and optimizing process, so this is a jump into a mid-point of that process.

Brian Jojade's question about how loud delays should be is either mis-written or sarcasm, but where he's going with this is that the delays should be missed if they were turned off.  What "missed" might sound like depends on what the delay system is compensating for, and that brings us back to design of the primary system coverage (the start of the process) and what architectural, aesthetic, or other considerations keep the designer from covering the most area with the fewest loudspeaker deployments, for which the delay/under balc system is to 'fix.' 

The things Ivan Beaver brings up are the tools used by the System Optimizing Person to make the various fills, delays, under balc, etc work and play nice with whatever other coherent acoustic energy is sharing coverage area.  Did I mention people write books about this stuff?

So my question is "what are you using delay speakers to take care of, and where/how are they placed in the room?"

Hey Doung, thank you for taking time to answer my question, I am using delay speakers to minimize tonal variance and level variance, so that front to back levels are within 6db offset. My main purpose for using delays are to improve direct to reverbrent sound ratio (D/R), and keeping energy at the back somewhat less than the front so energy reflected off the back wall is less.
I am using QSC K.12.2 speakers as my mains and delays. Mains are placed left right and center of the stage, while delays are placed 25ft from mains on left and right. I know that the center zone at the back won't have much intelligibility because there are no delays coverage overlapping the coverage of the center placed mains, but I am trying to neglect that just for now.

[JamesJudson]

Myself along with a couple other people did.
You don't need any fancy SPL measuring equipment to get this working, set the delay time, you can measure it with a tape measure to get you to a good starting point, adjust the levels by listeing as we said earlier and Dave just posted.
Aim the delay speakers so they don't point directly at the back wall.

Oh really? I didn't notice. I am sorry, it's my bad. Thanks for taking time to write again. I really appreciate it.

[Tim McCulloch]

Hey Doung, thank you for taking time to answer my question, I am using delay speakers to minimize tonal variance and level variance, so that front to back levels are within 6db offset. My main purpose for using delays are to improve direct to reverbrent sound ratio (D/R), and keeping energy at the back somewhat less than the front so energy reflected off the back wall is less.
I am using QSC K.12.2 speakers as my mains and delays. Mains are placed left right and center of the stage, while delays are placed 25ft from mains on left and right. I know that the center zone at the back won't have much intelligibility because there are no delays coverage overlapping the coverage of the center placed mains, but I am trying to neglect that just for now.

I'm Tim, but we can move past that...

How deep is the coverage, how wide is the audience, is that area kind of square, rectangular, or fan-shaped?

Having delays at 25 feet seems... unhelpful, at least with the limited knowledge of coverage area.

[Tim Weaver]

Please answer one question for us.

Are you time-aligning these speakers with delay?


If you aren’t electronically delaying the delay speakers then no amount of level, eq, or aiming will help.

[Kevin Maxwell]

Please post a picture here of what the room looks like. You might have to post a few different pictures that will answer a lot of questions.

[Dave Garoutte]

If the delays are qsc  x.2, then you can adjust the delay internally.

[Doug Jane]

I'm Tim, but we can move past that...

How deep is the coverage, how wide is the audience, is that area kind of square, rectangular, or fan-shaped?

Having delays at 25 feet seems... unhelpful, at least with the limited knowledge of coverage area.

Delays at 25 feet? Your pa cant do 50 feet?

[Brian Jojade]

delays at 25 feet seems very odd indeed.  The only reason I could think that would be helpful is if your mains are right in the face of the front row.  In that case, repositioning the mains would likely result in MUCH better results to cover the space evenly.

If that's not an option, I'd almost treat the 'fills' as mains and the mains essentially become front fills.  Of course, you still need delay times to match, but then you turn the mains down quite a bit so that they cover the front rows only.

[ProSoundWeb Community]