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[Tom Young]

Boy, Danny. You're batting close to "0" here.

From what you say it *appears* that the church solicited a design and bid and then took the design (or perhaps just the equipment list) and bought the equipment on their own and presumably to save money. So the company that did the design work got the shaft.

It also appears that the implementation and installation of the equipment may not have been carried out properly. If this is the case, the church got what they deserve.

I suspect that all of the designers and installers that participate here have seen this before. I certainly have.

We who offer our advice here are not likely to chastise you (personally) or refuse to help out.  But this is (assuming that I have read between-the-lines accurately) a classic example of two human (aka: worldly) pitfalls that exist (to some degree) in the church sound market.

First; there are some churches who behave unscrupulously under the blinders of good stewardship or for even more ill-suited reasons. Not many, fortunately.

Second; many churches assume that all they need is the equipment and everything will magically work as long as they read the manuals and have a few volunteers who believe they have some remote understanding of electroacoustic systems. This is much more common.

If I have misread what has happened, please correct me.

Regardless, we still need all the details of how this system is set up, wired and operated.

[Danny Baies]

Tom Young wrote on Wed, 29 December 2010 17:35

Boy, Danny. You're batting close to "0" here. From what you say it *appears* that the church solicited a design and bid and then took the design (or perhaps just the equipment list) and bought the equipment on their own and presumably to save money. So the company that did the design work got the shaft. It also appears that the implementation and installation of the equipment may not have been carried out properly. If this is the case, the church got what they deserve. I suspect that all of the designers and installers that participate here have seen this before. I certainly have. We who offer our advice here are not likely to chastise you (personally) or refuse to help out.  But this is (assuming that I have read between-the-lines accurately) a classic example of two human (aka: worldly) pitfalls that exist (to some degree) in the church sound market. First; there are some churches who behave unscrupulously under the blinders of good stewardship or for even more ill-suited reasons. Not many, fortunately. Second; many churches assume that all they need is the equipment and everything will magically work as long as they read the manuals and have a few volunteers who believe they have some remote understanding of electroacoustic systems. This is much more common. If I have misread what has happened, please correct me. Regardless, we still need all the details of how this system is set up, wired and operated.

I understand you an I know this too, and for that reason im trying to help out and correct as much as possible ...

[Ivan Beaver]

Tom-you are sooooo correct.  

As you say-an equipment list does not a sound system make.

What we do in just about every case is to supply a single number and a basic description of the system to the church.  We make sure that in the design we have included everything that they want or has been agreed upon.

If they want a design, then that is a seperate line item cost.  At least that way we get something for our work.

In the past we have had people take our equipment list and "go shopping".  Then they install the gear where they "think" it should go, have no idea how to do an alignment and then they say that "we" had a bad design.

But what they did was NOT our design.

What we provide is SOLUTIONS and gear just happens to be PART (and PART is the important word) of that solution.

What they are paying for is a lot more than a pile of gear that they have shopped out.  But to many it is only about gear-not how it is installed-aligned-system warranty-service after the sale-training and so forth.   THAT is where the value is-NOT in the cost of the gear savings.

[Danny Baies]

Well, i put together a basic design to show how the signal is routed.
I found out that the company that did the system design was SPL Integrated Solutions and included in the archive are some files that they presented(i dont know if are for any use).
Also included are some pics to see how the room is and placement of the speakers.
I didn't include the monitor system in the schematic.  There  are 3 Crown CE-1000's for the monitors. Each monitor (JBL JRX112M) on stage (4 available) is connected to one channel on a CE-1000 (ie one monitor per channel).

You can download the files here: http://hotfile.com/dl/92958928/64bcf49/RBC_AUDIO_SYSTEM.rar. html

Any advice is welcome.
Thank you.

[Sidney.Pilien]

Did you test it w/a cd? If both cd and mics sound the same, check the compressor/ limiter if you have one. The curve may be set too low.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Danny Baies wrote on Wed, 29 December 2010 23:00

I understand you an I know this too, and for that reason im trying to help out and correct as much as possible ...

Danny, you seem like a good guy who is just trying to help build God's Kingdom,and that is all the rest of us are trying to do, so you are one of us.

However, we all have a our limitations, and there are things that many of us should not attempt without getting help from higher powers, whether human or Godly.

The good news is that you told us where you are technically when you presented a feedback problem as an amplifier power problem.  I think the consensus around here is that if you are at that level of understanding and experience, you're probably "not* the best guy or even a reasonable choice for the guy to go hands-on and solve the problem before us. You are probably not the guy we're going to coach on-line to solve the problem.

You need to find a local human "higher power" to come on-site to address this problem, maybe even the people that did the original design work that was ummm (trying hard to avoid the word stolen) ummm, cribbed to get what is before you. It would probably take a lot of humility to go back to them and admit that your church did them wrong and that you need them to help you bail water.

Being a professional is really about doing the work right and getting paid and not being hurt or holding grudges.

I don't think that even the original contractors will be that upset with you. Ordering and schlepping equipment into place is not their primary business. At this point, what is needed is someone to put what may be some perfectly good hardware choices into the right places the right way. That's the primary service that audio professionals provide. Any half-smart clerk can order parts from a list, and a good rigger can hang speakers so they don't fall on top of people. It takes much more than that to do things right, or even do things so that the equipment really works at all.

[Brad Weber]

Danny, just to reiterate that this is not directed at you as you apparently are just trying to help and are caught in the middle, but the past actions of the church as you have described them certainly discourages the people that may now help them from investing their time and efforts in order to resolve a situation that the church seemingly made a deliberate decision to allow to happen.  I definitely hope the church paid SPL fairly for the work they provided and that the church subsequently did utilize.

Given that SPL apparently went as far as EASE modeling, there appears to have been a fairly well thought out system design.  However, that is not necessarily reflected in the installation shown in the other documents.  For example, the speaker array installed does not seem to match that shown in the EASE model.  In specific, the EASE model appears to show a speaker other than a VRX angled sharply down for each of the FOH side fills while the array installed appears to have two VRX boxes at a much shallower angle (in fact while it may be an artifact of the photos, all of the side fill and choir speakers appear to be aimed at the walls rather than at the listeners).  The EASE model also appears to show a single VRX box for the choir while the installed arrays has a center array of two VRX boxes with a subwoofer as well as two side fill VRX boxes.  It also looks like the main FOH array is installed at less of a down angle than reflected in the EASE model, although that could definitely be an artifact of the pictures.  There may have been modifications made after the EASE model shown was prepared but based solely on the documentation provided there seems to be some significant differences in the equipment and application related to the speaker arrays.

Another example of some of the impact of the approach used is likely reflected in the signal routing shown in your sketch.  One thing that I immediately noted is that the system is apparently operating with the left main out for FOH and the right main out for the choir feed, which while it allows separate volume control of the two signals, does not allow for separate FOH and choir mixes other than through channel panning (e.g. pan the choir mics full left to put them to FOH and not the choir, pan a source center to be equal in both mixes, etc.).  Another is that the FOH and choir subwoofer are fed the same signal rather than dedicated signals, which results in the choir subwoofer being sent whatever is routed to FOH rather than what is routed to the choir.  Given that, it may be better for both the choir and FOH to simply disable the choir subwoofer.

All of this just reaffirms what Arnold already noted, that it seems to be an example of a good concept and good hardware being less than optimally applied.  However, to use what they have to the best extent will likely require some fairly significant changes, from reaiming and perhaps reconfiguring elements in the speaker array to revising the basic system signal flow and the DriveRack programming (and maybe even looking at a different DSP device that may be better suited for the application).

[Danny Baies]

Thanks to all of you for your input.

I will definitely try to go to the SPL Company and see if they will accept to redo this setup and fix as much as possible.

[Tom Young]

Well said. I completely agree.

[Tom Young]

Quote:

I will definitely try to go to the SPL Company and see if they will accept to redo this setup and fix as much as possible.

This is by far the smartest course of action and the righteous thing to do.

Even with all you have provided us, there are no clear (silver bullit) problems. But there are quite a few potential problems. I could guess at a few but this would be a waste of time.

SPL is highly regarded in "our" circles. They did not deserve to be burned (and I still don't really know for sure that they were) but I suspect if you approach them with humility that they will not attempt to penalize you. However, you will pay more because they lost the mark up on the sale of the equipment and it will take more time for them to "reverse engineer" what is going on than it would have cost for them to do the initial installation. Fair is fair.

Assuming that your church accepts SPL's proposal, you will not only probably get everything straigtened out, you also will be paying for measurement and optimization (which will reveal any of the possible errors in how the system was wired) plus an obligation, on their part, to ensure that the system works well. Make sure they include training.

Please let us know how this works out.

[ProSoundWeb Community]