Q & A

I received an e-mail from Chris:

What a blessing it was to find your site!

I searched for over an hour to find exactly what you talk about on your site. How grateful I am that you offer your email and even phone number – so I thank you in advance.

You are very welcome, but I have to give all the credit to God.  Before he transformed my life I was quite self centered and lazy.  Now I have been rewired and helping others in a production ministry just comes naturally.

 

I’ll be brief for now and hit my greatest need:

 

Is there  a decibel meter one could set up in the sanctuary which will transmit a reading to the board operator in the sound booth?

Why? You may ask… We have a problem with things getting too loud during worship. Subjective control of music volume is just not cutting it (actually the pastor’s mic runs hot most of the time too).  My objective is to help volunteers avoid getting too high – particularly the very young who seem to have lost all sensitivity to volume and the very old who… may be a little hard of hearing.

North Point and other big budget environments will setup dedicated mics  and use expensive software that not only shows the decibels coming out of the speakers, but a full break down of the frequencies and a history (to analyze feedback or odd noises).

But of course, if you could afford such a package, you probably would likely have compressors and other high end equipment that can help control the volume levels.

So here’s my low budget suggestion.  Download a FREE program called jDFT and put it on a laptop or computer that can be placed near the sound board.  Instead of using a reference mic, use the Tape Out or some other output of the sound board and run it into the computer.  Now you can have a visual view of what is coming out of the sound board.

This is a limited solution.  You have to keep in mind that the readout is subjective to the volume levels set by the mixing console, and the volume level on the input of the computer.  So the program can’t tell you exactly how many decibels you are working with.  But it does give you a visual image of what is coming out of the sound board.  And as long as you keep the amp levels and computer input volume at the same place week to week, you can establish a rule to keep the sound under -10 or whatever you decide during the first few weeks you monitor the levels.

One more caveat – a reference mic tells you exactly how loud a room is, while this program merely tells you how loud the output of the mixer is.  This isn’t the same thing.  An empty room vs a full house will sound quite different.  Human bodies tend to absorb sound and drain some of the energy from the room.  So do not choose a volume level to work with during a rehearsal or time when the room is relatively empty, it may be too quiet or low energy when the room fills up.

If you have the money and resources, you could run a microphone straight into the computer without going through the mixer.  In fact, if you look at the iPod accessories available at an electronics store, you can sometimes find a mic cable that has a 3.5 mm plug at the other end to go straight into the computer’s input.

 

Treating your speakers right

In the typical American church service, you begin with a band and have to mix a couple of songs, then you get to the “easy part” where you turn on the pastor’s microphone and take a break while he speaks. But I would argue that it is so much more important that you get the volume and EQ just right for a speaker teaching the word of God than it is during the live music part of a service. For one thing, a band has multiple voices and instruments that compliment each other and even draw attention away from mistakes. But when a person is up on stage speaking, there is just one microphone on and that is the sole focus that everyone is hearing in the audience.

The overall rule is still the same – you want to be an unnoticed and invisible part of the equation. The best way to accomplish this during the sermon is to get the volume just right so that each and every person listening feels like they are in a small room hearing the pastor or teacher speaking directly to them. If the volume is too loud, they will feel like they are in an auditorium listening to a sermon with hundreds or thousands of others. In other words, if a pastor sounds like he’s going through a sound system and attention is drawn to how loud it is, you missed that mark of excellence. You also draw more attention to the sound system (vs the content of the message) when the volume is too low, leaving people wishing they had sat more up front and they might be missing words and parts of the teaching.

When the Holy Spirit is blessing the speaker with right words to say, and you have the volume just right, then you get the positive feedback of hearing people as they exit the building saying things like, “It seemed like he was speaking directly to me.”

Likewise, it is so important to get the EQ just right for that single microphone. Otherwise members of the audience may have a stray thought or two about how the microphone sounds like it’s going over a telephone or that the speaker is utilizing a tin can. The goal is to get the EQ settings just right so that it sounds like the person is speaking to you without a microphone or sound system at all.

You know how you can give people a “blind taste test” by blindfolding a person and then giving them two samples of a drink or certain food to see which they like better or whether or not they can tell a difference between Coca Cola vs Pepsi? Imagine a blind sound test. You will know that you have the volume and EQ settings absolutely perfect if a blindfolded person can’t tell how far away the pastor is or if he is even using a microphone at all. People who close their eyes during a message should be able to imagine the speaker standing a couple feet in front of them just sharing the words on their heart to the people next to them.

It is impossible to design an auditorium or sound system that can accomplish that level of perfection for every single seat in the house. But with the right loudspeaker placement and a knowledgeable person behind the mixing console practicing at getting the volume just right, it should be possible to make yourself completely invisible to most of the members of the audience.

Some of the common obstacles against such transparency include:

• The loudspeakers being too low. When you increase the volume for the sake of the people in the rear of the auditorium, you end up making it too loud for the people in the front. Keep this in mind, especially since you will likely be controlling the volume from the rear or very back of the room. It is likely that the best volume is achieved when it sounds too quiet in the sound booth area. The higher the loudspeakers are mounted, the more similar the distance sound has to travel whether to the people seated in front or rear of the auditorium. You can also setup extra sets of speakers set farther back. In either case, you should get an experienced consultant involved when your church is deciding where to mount speakers or how many sets should be used.
• Echoes and reverberations – Sound travels relatively slow, and it does bounce off the walls and ceilings. When you hear the same sound waves coming from the speaker and again after they bounce off the rear walls or ceiling, it tends to give the speaker a “muddy” effect and can make it hard to discern individual words. In some rooms, certain frequencies may be more likely to bounce and echo than others, which may require you to compensate by cutting those frequencies on the EQ. If this is a common problem in your church, you may want to look into more sophisticated equipment such as a parametric EQ which allows you to modify a narrower range of frequencies and be less noticeable if you have to compensate for a room that reverberates too much.
• Microphone placement – The best type of microphone to have for someone teaching is an earset style, generally known as a “Countryman” microphone. It is a razor thin flesh colored microphone that hangs over a person’s ear and sits right at the corner of the speaker’s mouth. Unfortunately these are still quite expensive, so the most common type of microphone you will likely be working with is a lavalier. These are the wireless microphones you see clipped to someone’s tie or jacket a couple of inches under the speaker’s mouth. The biggest problem with lavaliers is that once you’ve found the perfect volume, the speaker will turn his head or look down at the podium which completely changes the volume in the microphone and ultimately the room. So pay attention and turn down the volume if you know the person speaking is going to be looking down to read, and you might need to increase the volume if that person turns his or her head to talk about something on the side of the stage (such as a chart or content projected on the screen). In this case, a compressor would be a useful piece of equipment that can handle such volume changes automatically.
• “Essing” – If you notice how often the words end in an “s” sound as a person is speaking, you may need to de-ess the EQ. The “S” sounds and certain other emphasized consonants, or extra hissing or static like sounds can be reduced by turning down the high or upper-mid range frequencies on the equalizer.
• Leaving the room – I’ve visited some churches where the sound person gets up and leaves the auditorium after turning on the pastor’s mic. While it may be true that the mixing console doesn’t need a baby sitter and hearing the message being taught once during the first service is enough, I recommend that you do stay during all services. You may find the message “boring” by the fifth time you’ve heard it, but if you try you may learn something that you missed the first four times. This way you can be proactive in making sure that lavalier microphone sounds its best. You can be more responsive if something goes wrong, such as a wireless microphone suddenly going dead or picking up intererence. You can be ready to prevent feedback if the pastor spontaneously decides to make his message more interactive and walks in front of the stage and into the audience, etc. The same may not be true if your church utilizes video sermons, microphones are always open to surprises and risk of feedback, prerecorded video doesn’t include too many unexpected audio changes. One final point to consider: in recent auditorium designs, the mixing console is set 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the way from the stage in the middle of the audience. When you get up to leave a few minutes after the sermon starts, you changed your status from unnoticed to noticed for the people seated behind you.

Chapter 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  And that Word was preached from the hilltops and in front of the temple.  A reader would shout the Word of the Lord as loud as they could, and hopefully the crowd would be able to hear him.  Over the years people have learned how to build amphitheaters and project their voice so that more and more people could hear the Good News.  Until one day someone found a way to use electricity to amplify the voice out of speakers that could enable thousands to hear at one time and even at multiple locations at once. 

Sharing the Word used to mean one person would yell really loud.  But now we have mixing consoles and microphones and amplifiers, which all help of course, but what used to be a one person operation now requires people who know how to manipulate the dozens of knobs and controls so that the reader or speaker can be heard by crowds of all sizes. 

And that’s why you’re reading this book.  You have either asked or have been asked to volunteer to be a part of the team of people it takes to share God’s Word through the use of modern audio equipment.  Or perhaps you are a builder and mistakenly thought this book, Reinforcing the Church, was about how to engineer and build the structures that people meet in every Sunday.  Sorry about that, this book isn’t for you.

And in fact, this book may also not be for you even if you were intentionally looking for a beginners guide to audio systems.  It isn’t the right job for everyone.  Running the sound board and most of the tech production volunteer jobs require a special kind of person to be able to handle it.  One challenge that makes the job geared for a particular type of person is that it requires a strong level of humility (or it will teach it if you aren’t humble already). 

Think about this: how many famous audio engineers can you name?  If you are a true Beatles fan, you may know the name of some of the people involved in their recording process.  But more than likely, you don’t know any.  That’s because it is a thankless and invisible job.  Or at least, as a good engineer you hope it is.  The only time someone thinks about the sound guy or looks back to see what’s going on in the booth is when something is horribly wrong: shrieking feedback, horrible noises, no sound, etc.  Otherwise, all the attention is up on stage and you will be invisible.

And that means that it has to be your goal to be unnoticed and invisible when you are volunteering in the audio or other production environment.  The best you can hope for is that nobody notices you are there.  If you are lucky, or in a good environment with great people, you’ll at least get some praise and gratitude from the pastor, worship team, and other staff or volunteers.

Below is a list of traits that make a good audio engineer, as well as a list of warning signs that may want to prompt you to consider looking elsewhere for volunteer opportunities:

You can be a great, invisible, and unnoticed audio engineer if:

• You love music and like having the control over how loud it is
• Your picky about how the music coming out of your stereo sounds.  You’d rather have the stereo with full Bass, Treble, and other tone controls over the basic stereo that has a “Tone” knob if that (whatever that is). 
• You are or want to be a musician
• You would rather work behind the scenes to bring glory to God than be out on stage struggling against the temptation of drawing attention to yourself.
• One of your primary spiritual gifts is that of service, or helps. 
• You don’t mind some heavy lifting every once in a while.  Speakers and other gear can weigh a lot and sometimes they need to be moved.

You may want to talk to the volunteer coordinators in your particular ministry if any of the following can apply to you:

• You get frustrated that nobody ever appreciates the hours you put in or shows gratitude for a job well done.
• You have some level of tone-deafness.  If you can’t tell whether the sound from an instrument or microphone sounds natural or not, then you may have a physical handicap that prevents you from being able to mix well.
• If you have never thought about what the Bass or Treble controls do on your stereo and have never cared what setting they are at, then you may not have the attention to detail that is required to adjust settings towards the goal of invisibility.  For some people this can be a learned skill, but I have met some who for whatever reason never quite get the whole equalizer thing and may end up creating an environment where the audience is thinking about how the microphone sounds like a telephone or whatever.  The fact that the general audience would think about the fact that there is a microphone already means that you haven’t yet achieved the goal of invisibility. 
• If you think you’ll get to hang out with or meet famous people when you run sound for them, you may find nothing but disappointment.  I once was working in production for a venue where Dave Ramsey was speaking.  The closest I got to meeting him was being able to hand the microphone to one of his staff members that then passed it along.  I have yet to ever say “Hello” to Andy Stanley and have never had the chance to hang out with any of the “celebrities” at North Point Community Church where I currently spend most of my time volunteering.  If that were my goal, the staff responsible for where I volunteer should be concerned. 

None of the above automatically disqualifies you from being a part of the audio, video, or production crew.  But it may mean you aren’t best suited for the role directly behind the mixing console itself. 

Still reading?  Great, it is my hope that you find the remaining chapters informative and educational.  If you have never worked with a mixing console before, you should be able to manage your way through turning on microphones and even mixing a band by the time you finish.  And with enough practice, you too can be an unnoticed and invisible part of your church.  Fortunately that’s not the end of the story.  I don’t doubt for a minute how much God values the giving of your time and talents to help other people hear the story of the Word made flesh.  And that’s all that matters. 

May God bless you and show you directly his gratitude for your giving heart, willingness to volunteer, and humility. 

MediaShout vs ProPresenter, Round 4

Question for you ProPresenter fans out there:

On Wednesday nights there’s a group that meets in the room I volunteer at. They watch a 35 minute clip that’s on a DVD and then break out into small groups. I’m trying to simplify my life by capturing the DVD clips and converting them to H.264 format. This would be particularly useful next week because I will be absent, and they are showing 2 clips from 2 different DVD’s. So my preference would be to have the clips on the hard drive ready to go in ProPresenter rather than have my substitute mess with switching discs, etc.

So, last Wednesday, I tried running my H.264 clip. It was 640×480 and encoded at 1200 kbps. I figured this was a reasonable quality for a standard definition projector, not too high, not too low. I watched the first five minutes before hand, everything looked good. So the event starts, I click the video. And about 10 minutes in, the audio and video get out of sync. After a few more minutes it got so bad that people started coming up to the sound board to see if I noticed (Yes, I did, thanks). I ended up switching to the DVD mid clip.

What’s weird is that the video on the local computer display was fine, it was the projector feed that was horribly out of sync. I’m thinking it was just too high quality for feed for that computer. Am I right? How low can I go without noticeable loss? Any other recommendations?

When a program like ProPresenter or MediaShout runs the video in two different places at once (on the projector’s output and on the preview display), it takes quite a few computer resources to pull that off. That’s why MediaShout defaults to not showing the video on the local display, it only shows the thumbnail (along with Play/Pause, seek bar, etc), but there is an option to turn it on if you think your computer can handle it.

Does ProPresenter have any such option to turn off the local preview? Would it help in this case?

MediaShout vs ProPresenter, Round 3

I was going to save Round 3 for another day, but Mike’s already commented on Round 2 and it seemed necessary to respond.

Round 3: Reliability

Winner: Nobody, it’s all a bloody mess. Mike has blogged about his horrible experience trying to play an AVI file in MediaShout. For me, I would have checked what codec was used on the AVI and (re)install or fix it. I probably could have had it working faster than the time he took to convert the video. I have mentioned the problems I’ve been having with ProPresenter on the computer I work with at North Point (and my “boss” there has gotten quite the earful on it). Likewise, the right Mac expert can probably fix that computer in no time. The fact is, all computers are prone to some kind of failure, whether it is a hard drive failure, bad memory chip, improperly installed software, malware, poorly written add-ons, etc.

Okay, maybe the statistics say that Pro/Macs win this round too. But I’m not going to repeat everything I said in Round 1. I once heard a quote, I think it was C.S. Lewis but could be wrong…something to the effect, “That which has the greatest potential for good also has the greatest potential for evil”, or possibly the inverse. Point is, a PC has a lot of open doors which could be really really bad, or really really good, equal potential in either direction. A Mac has the same relationship. A functional properly installed/maintained PC has great potential and can do more than the Mac will allow. A messed up PC will be so much worse than a messed up Mac.

So if you are reading these posts trying to make up your mind about which platform to go with or what software…re-read Round 1 and go with whatever you have the best support for. If your IT dept (or IT volunteers as the case may be) are better at working with Macs, go with ProPresenter. And if you have a shortage of IT volunteers, then Mac/Pro is probably the safer option as well. (Notice I said safer, I can’t bring myself to say “better”, there’ll be a lot of features you miss out on, I’ll get to those in future rounds.)

MediaShout vs ProPresenter, Round 2

MediaShout:

• Laptop with good amount of video memory, and decent processor: $600

• Cost of software: $429

ProPresenter:

• Check out the Renewed Vision store if you want to see who wins this round.

Disclaimer:

Okay, so the Macs that Renewed Vision sells have a 2.0 GHz processor vs the 1.7 I saw at TigerDirect. But the point is PC’s are a lot cheaper. You can still buy a 2 GHz PC for a lot less than $1140. And a 1.7 dual core is more than adequate for most applications. My last event that I ran Mediashout at was a Men’s Retreat for the Covenant Southeast Conference. I was using my personal laptop for recording, and using my wife’s laptop (which was my laptop years ago) for MediaShout. That computer is a 1.4 GHz *single* core processor with 768 MB RAM. Granted, it was simple as far as video clips and such go, but it handled the job just fine without any complications. I even played AVI’s, FLV’s, and SWF files on it. MediaShout will play anything as long as you have the proper codec installed.

MediaShout vs ProPresenter, Round 1

Based on my conversations with people who have decided on MediaShout or ProPresenter, the PC vs Mac debate is really at heart of the issue.  Some of the other issues like “Ease of use” are really just side issues based on which platform you are more used to or can handle.

So Round 1 has to come out in favor of ProPresenter.  Macs are easier to use, easier to train volunteers on, and generally speaking (though I’ve seen exceptions first hand) are more reliable.

But, I still choose PC’s and Mediashout for the same reasons.  Macs are easier to use and more reliable because they leave you with fewer choices.  Businesses default to the PC platform not because they are easier to use, but because they are easier to customize.  Their potential is greater because the PC platform is generally open to any form of customizing you want to do and you can make a PC do something you want it to even if Microsoft didn’t think of it first.

I’m generalizing here, but the opposite is true for a Mac.  If Steve Jobs & Co didn’t think of it first (or Renewed Vision in this discussion), there’s little you can do to add the feature yourself.  This is why Macs are more reliable, people aren’t customizing it with conflicting options or accidentally changing something they didn’t intend to.  Developers can’t write code that has the same access to the core of the system the way they can on a PC.  This is great if the only developers you interact with write viruses, but bad if you run a business and want to hire developers who can automate your business.

The catch to it all is, you have to know what you are doing.  This means that the PC user needs more training, and generally speaking the average user won’t get to utilize the benefits unless they go into advanced training and learn to develop their own software solutions.  ProPresenter and Macs in general take much less training to get a new volunteer used to using it, and it’s difficult for them to mess anything up because their aren’t nearly as many options to mess up.

The bottom line is that if you give me a good computer with MediaShout installed, I can usually accomplish more and spend less money than anyone using ProPresenter.  But I know what I’m doing, and I will freely admit it’s harder to get a volunteer to start doing what I do.

Presentation Software

At North Point, I’m just a volunteer at the bottom of the food chain.  So I don’t get to be involved in creative process (generally speaking, there are exceptions) or make administrative decisions.  One of which is to use ProPresenter and Macs exclusively for all video, lyrics, and even music.  So I’ve learned to use it as best I can and try to appreciate what we have (that they’re not making me use PowerPoint!).

More than not, I’d rather be behind the sound board mixing than behind the computer managing what’s up on the screens.   I’m not really visually wired, I love the worship experience of being behind the mixing console, closing my eyes (with my hands one or two key volume faders), and soaking in the experience.  But for some reason God has been putting me more and more into the position of running the computer graphics and being responsible for the creative components of projecting lyrics, backgrounds, video clips, etc.

So in the environments where I’m the creative director and I make the executive decisions, I use MediaShout on my own laptop.

At Highlands Church, I’ve also had the opportunity to see EasyWorship in action and play with it a little.  Granted, not as much as the other alternatives, so my opinions are worth no more than what you are paying for them.  But I’d like to share my opinions on the software and offer my perspective on which option to go with if you are considering a purchase for your ministry.

My preference is clearly for MediaShout over ProPresenter, just as I would prefer to have a PC than a Mac.  When staff at North Point hear me say this, they respond, “I’ll pray for you.”  And so be it.  But I do make a living working on PC’s, and know them inside and out, so one could say I’m biased.   Keep that in mind when reading future posts where I attempt to compare the different options.

Mike Sessler has a clear opinion too and would much rather have ProPresenter.  He blogs about his transition from MediaShout and I posted some comments if you want to follow along.

Anyone need a 12 step program?

Harmony-Central.com has an article called “Mixing: The 12-Step Program” that I thought was a great resource.  It was written for studio musicians, but there’s a lot of helpful tips that apply to the live church environment as well.  It starts with a great introduction:

In theory, mixing should be easy: you just adjust the knobs until everything sounds great. But this doesn’t happen by accident. Mixing is as difficult to master as playing a musical instrument

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but not because I haven’t thought about it.  In fact, I’ve been composing in my head a post about how being the sound guy requires a lot of the same skills and talents as being a musician.  After all, even though you’re not playing the instruments, you make the decision as to which instruments get heard and which ones are lost in the background.  It’s nice to know someone reaffirms my opinion that learning to mix is like mastering an instrument in itself.

The Questions in your Mind

As you are mixing some instruments and vocals together, there are several different questions you can keep asking to evaluate which channels need to be modified. At the typical youth event or concert, the primary question is “Is this as loud as I can get it?” Even in my own high school years I got a thrill from being in the front row or mosh pit and see how much noise I can sustain. Hearing the actual instruments or words to the song came second to thinking I’m cool because the subwoofer was disrupting my digestion.

But as I find myself mixing worship events and caring more about hearing the words and the subtleties between different instruments, the main question I try to keep my focus on is “What can I turn down?”  It’s not that I don’t want anything to be loud, I still appreciate the quantity at times (and I’m not 30 yet).  But the most common mistake when mixing is to turn channels up when something isn’t right.  For example, the band is picking up volume and it’s hard to hear the singer, so you go and turn up the microphone volume.  But then the guitar is getting lost in the background and you turn it up.  Before you know it, your volume has increased too much for the room size or possibly distorting.

So instead, try to keep things at your target volume, and when you think the vocals or a certain instrument is being lost or drowned out…ask yourself what can be turned down to fix this mix.   That way you keep your overall volume consistent, and you can highlight the quality of the mix without faking it with quantity.

As I think about it, this principle is a main focus for a lot of audio engineering aspects, not just the house mix.  I apply the same principle when trying to use the equalizer to fix the tone of a channel or mix.  When a channel doesn’t sound right and the EQ needs to be modified, I think of which frequencies can be cut and do so, only increasing on the rare exceptions when too many cuts have already happened or there really is a need for boosting just a single frequency by a small amount.

This principle is especially important when mixing monitors and even in ears.  The biggest trap you can fall into is turning up instruments or microphones when a musician asks you to.  This is especially problematic when a single monitor speaker is shared between two or more musicians.  For example, the lead singer says they need more vocal and you turn it up, then the guitarist says he needs more.  As soon as you turn the guitar up, the vocalist again says he needs more.  Neither realize that the vocal range and guitar range are close in frequency range and are literally drowning each other out, competing for which input has more dominance in the monitor.  And you become stuck with this really loud monitor that is competing with and possibly overpowering the FOH (Front of House) speakers.

With dedicated monitors or in-ears, you can evaluate which instrument or channel is most important to the musician and make sure the mix reflects that, turning down other channels until the instrument they want is at the forefront (which 99 out of 100 times is their own instrument or vocal).  With shared monitors, you will have to communicate with the musicians to work out a compromise, or try to arrange the stage so that complimentary (instead of competing) instruments are sharing the monitor feed.  When the guitarist is asking for more volume, you can tell him or her that the monitor is as loud as you can allow it and ask if other instruments can be turned down instead.  Usually the people sharing the monitor can agree to some kind of compromise.