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.