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.