One of the most common things I see (and hear) when I evaluate a house of worship sound system is that the mixing console is not in a very "sound-friendly" location. There are obvious limitations when deciding on the placement of the board, but I have seen a worship house spend buckets of money on a state-of-the-art system and then stick their mixing console in an out-of-the-way corner of the worship room.
There is no question that a console and outboard gear can take up a lot of room, but at the same time, there can be no question as to how important properly locating this piece of gear can be. So there are a few things you have to consider when looking for a new location for you and your board.
Where Not to Be
Assuming you will be mixing from the FOH position, your mixing console must not:
- Be in the way of the congregation – either visually or physically impeding pedestrian traffic flow in and out of the worship space.
- Be so close to the stage that you can't get an accurate audio perspective of the house sound system.
- Be in a position where the audio snake is in the way of the congregation because of where the console is located.
It's super-important (and pretty obvious) that these locations should be avoided. Some other places you should be wary of are:
Under the balcony. This location can be a difficult place to mix from, especially if your back is against a hard wall. Some frequencies will be trapped and others amplified in the area under the balcony. Also, there will be frequencies reflecting off the wall behind you that will inevitably muddy up your hearing.
Mixing your services from up in the balcony area can present its own problems, such as not being able to effectively hear low frequencies as well as if you were mixing from the floor of the worship space. The exact frequencies, and how dramatic the loss will be, will vary from house to house. But generally, the higher you are from the floor, the more bass you will lose. If you are currently mixing from the balcony area, make frequent visits to the floor of your worship space during a service. Train your ears to hear the difference from your mixing location and the floor. Soon you will be able to adjust for the elevation of your console.
In some rare cases, your console may be located in an enclosed room with either a window or video screen from which you can observe the stage. If this describes your situation, you should have a pair of monitors in the room with you in order to mix the service properly. To make the best of this situation, listen and compare the worship space speakers and your personal room monitors and then adjust your monitor's tonality as closely as possible to the house sound system. While the two speaker systems will never sound identical, you can adjust your reference monitors to the point where the relationship between the two systems will allow you to mix accurately.
Okay, now we know what to avoid, but the reality is that you may already be mixing from one of these positions, or at best, your console will probably reside on the left or right side of the worship room. So we will have to learn to make the best of it. Wherever you are mixing from, your ears will ultimately adjust to the location. There is one simple fix to keep in mind. If you are mixing close to the back wall of your worship space, it is a good idea to treat that wall with the proper acoustic material. Anything from curtains to sound panels to acoustic foam can be used to prevent sound waves from the FOH speakers from reflecting off the back wall into your ears.
Walk the Room
With that in mind, once you have your singers and worship band mixed well for the congregation, you should make it a habit to walk around the room (if you are allowed) during a service and listen carefully.
As you do this, you may discover locations within your worship space that are know as "sweet spots." Don't think that the entire room can sound equal to these spots. They are unique unto themselves. Moving just a few feet away from a sweet spot will bring another reality to light. Basically they are few and far between but every room has at least one. Obviously you don't want your console located in a sweet spot.
Besides, the chances are your sweet spots will be located somewhere in the middle of the worship space and not along the sides or back of the room. You are not going to pull seats 1, 2 and 3 out of row 11 and install your console there. However, you may be able to change your house speaker location or adjust the angle of throw (direction the sound waves leave the speakers) into the room. These speaker changes can dramatically improve the sound you hear at the console and possibly widen or multiply the sweet spots in your worship space.
