As mixing engineers, we want our churches to sound as good as they possibly can. And even those who are not part of the audio team still want your house of worship to sound great. But how many of you think much about the other spaces? You know, the cry-room, the outbuildings, fellowship halls, etc. Not all worship houses have additional spaces or buildings, but if yours is one that does, these probably need attention.
A few years ago, I installed a really nice sound system in a church in Los Angeles. The rig included a new console, FOH speakers, monitors and microphones. This particular house of worship spent some real money on the new sanctuary sound system but neglected the rest of the church. After installing the new awesome sound system in the main sanctuary, I set up a sub mix to the cry-room, which was a little distance from the sanctuary. The room had just one worn-out 1970’s vintage speaker (not sure of the brand, as the logo had long fallen off) to relay the entire worship experience from the main sanctuary to that room. It was quite pitiful, but not uncommon.
There are two reasons the other spaces and buildings get neglected. One is that after spending all the available church resources on the main sound system, there is just no money left for anything else. The other reason is that the outbuildings and rooms are just not on the radar. Not enough people care about these spaces. They don’t have an advocate, even though they should. So where do we begin? First; there are the rooms that will get an audio feed during every service, and second; the rooms (or buildings) that will have their own independent sound systems. Of course, in some cases, a building may have both.
Aux Room Feeds
The rooms that generally get a signal from the sanctuary are the aforementioned cry-room, the pastor or staff offices, the lobby/narthex and sometime the restrooms. I think cry-rooms are the most common for additional speakers, but lobbies and offices are also pretty high on the list. I don’t really get many requests for audio in restrooms, but I have installed them, so I thought I would include it on the list.
As far as all of these rooms go, I like to use self-powered speakers. You can use a single mono send from your console and drive as many powered speakers as you need (or want). I say mono, because it is very easy to run just one cable from your mixer to your speakers and, in reality, that perfectly balanced stereo image is not so important in an office or lobby — or restroom, for that matter. Anyway, one single cable can be daisy-chained through all your speakers. That said, it is more desirable to have a separate send to control the volume in each space, but it can be managed with just one. I did an install in a cry-room, lobby and hallway that led to three offices using six self-powered QSC K8’s. The signal to all the speakers came from the mono out on a Mackie board. The point is that the whole system worked beautifully. Ultimately, I adjusted the level on the individual speakers so there was more volume in the lobby than the cry-room, which was louder than the hallway.
The Multipurpose Room
Now let’s move onto buildings completely separate from the main church. At the Pasadena Four Square in Pasadena, CA, there is a multipurpose room across the parking lot from the main church. Besides being a hangout for the teens and young adults of the church, it is the home of the No Future Café. One Friday out of a month the church opens up this coffee bar and club to all kinds of bands and anyone who wants to attend. For this room, I used two Cerwin-Vega CVA-118 active subs and four CVA-28 active satellite tops. Also, I put four Yamaha self-powered DSR-112 speakers for monitors.
Besides having a lot of power, the system is totally portable. So if this house of worship wants to put on any outreach shows away from church property — anything ranging from sunrise services to special programs — they can do it easily. It is my suggestion that if you plan on a separate sound system for one of your outbuildings that you purchase something that is designed to be portable. Actually, I think every worship house (if they can afford it) should have a portable system somewhere on the property. I can promise that if you have a system on hand, you will come up with new and exciting events where it will be put to good use.
The last scenario I want to talk about is having an out-building with its own sound system as well as an audio feed from the main church. The last one I did was a few years ago, but the installation was really simple. I buried a 2-inch PVC electrical conduit between the main worship house and my building. I exited the church with the conduit right through an exterior wall, across a lawn (underground) in through the exterior wall of the out-building. I then pulled two balanced audio cables through the conduit. XLR wall plates were mounted in both buildings, and I was done. If I wanted to send a signal from a church service, I simply had to run my cable from the main mixing board to the wall plate. The wall plate in my other building now had two hot signals from my sanctuary mix. I connected XLR’s from the wall plate to my out-building mixer, and I had the mixed service pumping through my portable system. It has been a few years since I installed that system. I could have used a wireless option, but the cable/conduit combo was both inexpensive and super-reliable.
Lunching with God
In another setup, I installed outdoor speakers in a lunch area at a Catholic school so a signal could be sent from the sanctuary to the outdoor eating area. I guess everybody needs a little God with their lunch.
