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[Hansel Anasarias]

my church is moving in a couple months to a new church location (praise God!!!)  The move will take place in august i believe.  When we move in, we will have a simple setup for sound.  Two 15"s on stands, most likely my behringer board, simple stuff.  Well anyways, we will eventually install a sound system.

Basically, the next couple months I'm going to be planning this project as well as the budget.  Basically as cheap as possible is best, but we don't want garbage for equipment.  I know that great sound doesn't have to cost $10k and aboove.  I've personally only worked with club style speakers like the Yamaha club series, JBL TR series, etc...

The church seats about 200 on the floor, not including those on the stage of course.  And about 40-50 more in the balcony.  The church will undergo remodeling, and end up accomodating up to 450-500 people.

Our music styles are: hymns, rock, hip-hop & dance music for cd playback, alternative... bascically contemporary worship.

A couple questions:

1. Are club style speakers (such as those mentioned above) good for a church install? Why/why not...

2. What are some brands that I could research meanwhile?  DAS, EAW, JBL, Community, Bose....etc.  Tell me what you think.

I think our future setup will be something like:

FOH: Flown speakers, probablly one each side, rather than cluster.  And matching sub's to go with those.

Balcony: 2-speaker setup for support purposes (prob. set on a delay to match time)

Monitors: floor, since we don't have any dedicated "sound guys" yet.  it'll be hard to teach new things right away...

Eh, so much to remember. Any input helps, thanks all!!!!

[iJam]

Contacthansel,
Hey I'm happy for you and your church. It's always exciting to get into a new facility.

My first advice to you is to hire a professional to design and install your system.

Regarding your questions, Club style speakers that you are referring to such as the Yamaha and Jbl TR series are not meant to be flown and are inferior to professional grade speakers on many levels. All of the brands that you mention, with (in my opinion) the exception of Bose, make good quality professional grade speakers. Certainly there are many others to choose from like EV, SLS (my personal fav), Adamson, and Meyer to name a few. Any of these companies will give great results with a proper installation and a good sound engineer.

That goes back to my advice. Don't try to do it yourself. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors and certainly a good installer would be key here.  

[Karl P(eterson)]

I will have to agree with "iJam" here, but will add some of my own.

As to the quality of equipment: In a seating area for 200+ people, You will soon find out that providing quality sound for that space will run you much more than 10'000$. Knowing no more about your space or requirements than those which you have already stated, the systems I have seen lately providing quality (read: not overkill) sound for that size of room would run around 5 times your thought process. This also does not include lighting or media (read: projection) which can run that much each in there own right without much trouble.

As to your comment about you running clubs with systems made out of JBL TR systems or Yamaha Club speakers. I don't know what kind of clubs these are, but I would venture to guess they are not overly popular ones, or if they are, the general quality of what's around them is not very good. Around where I live, the clubs of any quality that actually specialize in live music / dance music have systems running in the hundreds of thousands.


Now... on to a more general comment to follow up on "iJams" comment about you needing to have a system designed...


When dealing with churches of any size (lets say 100 and above) in an installed environment, it requires a lot of work to do it right. I am not saying that you always need a consultant if you are capable of designing the system yourself, but lets take a look at what that involves....

Normally speaking being able to proficiently design systems involves buying the tools (from modeling programs to testing gear), taking the classes (synaudcons offerings in full are a bare minimum here), learning the theory (Read and understand "Sound Reinforcement Handbook" till you are at least proficient in the concepts), research locations (go to different Church's and finding out what they do and don't like, what they would do different), research products (trade shows, shootouts, listening to tons of different speakers, learning differences between different dsps, soundboards, Mic's, etc, etc), have at least rudimentary knowledge of electronics, physics, and acoustics and how that effects your systems. Last but not least, you must also know how to channel all of this information quickly and effectively into what you do.

Now, you have a choice, You can spend the (literally) tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to get to that point. Or you can hire a person for a modest fee who can do it for you.

Also, feel free to keep bouncing ideas off of us, we are happy to help in any way we can!

Karl P

[bates15]

Good replies. Take a learning out of these posts and don't do what a lot of us (yes me to) have done wrong in the past.

If you cannot go over the $10K try to work out some sort of lease-plan and have the $10K as a down payment. The company's will see that as a very serious client. And it is not as if the company's are so full of work they can refuse anyone!

[JohnnyB]

Back in February, I did the audio for a video venue that seats 250 for just over $10K.  JBL AM4212 speakers, QSC amp, A&H MixWiz 16:2  dbx Driverack PA, JBL Eon G2 monitors.  The music is live (acoustic guitars and 3 vocals) and the sermon is a video feed.  All labor was volunteer EXCEPT flying the speakers.  Total A/V/L cost was just under $20K.  They are now wanting to "up" the system to be able to do some "louder" music, so I'll be pricing subs.

John Barbour

[Hansel Anasarias]

wow...hmm....don't know what to say.  I personally don't think we need to hire a consultant because the sanctuary just look so small to me when i first saw it just this past Tuesday.  I only think this way because of the size of the place compared to what we have now.  And even when we do remodel, it won't change the FOH setup. Hmm....

I do really appreciate all of your replies, considering that if not most, all of you have many years under yer belts and do audio for large congregations/audiences.   Hopefully I can get back in there and take pics, and let you all see for yourselves.  Until then, still researching...I did learn theory of sound, and acoustics from school, but man... I'm super rusty when it comes to that, argh!

But I totally understand what you all are saying!  Application is key, heh.  Thanks again.  Back soon with more question etc..

[Hansel Anasarias]

oh...btw, are the dispersion angles accurate in the specs given by the manufacturers for their speakers? ... curious.

[Karl P(eterson)]

Yes and no. For the most part the information is accurate, but the question comes in at "what are they measuring". Are they averaging 20~20K, are the measuring 1k? 10k? SweptSine from 100~10k? Some manufacturers will tell you. Some won't. Chances are that the better the manufacturer and quality of product, the more willing they will be to deluge information about the product. This isn't always true, but call a company up if you don't find the info on the website and you will quickly get a feel for the quality of the company and product(s).

Karl P

[Elgaard]

We have very good experiences with Yamaha MS400

God bless

[Rob Warren]

One way to consider when finding out how much to budget for new sound system is this:

Plan on about 150 - 200 dollars per seat.  

200 seats :  30000 - 40000 dollars

This will not get you cadillac everything but it should buy decent equipment.  
It also depends on your worship style.  Obviously spoken word an Organ music isn't as demanding on the system as a Praise Band with Drums, bass, etc.  


Obviously you can get by cheaper with other plans but you will always get what you pay for and there will be times where it suffers consequences.  
I led worship at a 200 seat room for a few years.  We had speakers on stands and some cheap monitor wedges.  I never was happy with the sound.  Speakers on stands get the people up front blown away and the people in the back not hearing.  Musicians and singers would complain about the sound of the monitors.  Anyway,  you see what I'm getting at.  Operator error aside, there is only so much you can do with what you got.  Running the lapel mic was always a real good time with the speakers on stands.

Rob

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