In the Christian faith, there are numerous important dates throughout the calendar year, but the two really big ones are Christmas and Easter. A lot of time, effort, and energy goes into the technical aspects of production during these two seasons. They both require additional resources, but there is one major aspect distinguishing the two — at Christmas, winter has just begun, so services are almost certain to be held indoors (at least throughout most of the northern hemisphere — although there are exceptions — my church here in Arizona held outdoor services this most recent Christmas eve). Indeed, special Christmas services are almost ubiquitously an indoor affair.
‘Tis the Season…
Easter, on the other hand, frequently proves to be a different case. By that time of year, spring (hopefully) has sprung, and for a large swath across the southern U.S., at least, it becomes plausible to offer outdoor sunrise services at Easter, and more than a few churches across the country do so. It requires a little outside the box (and outside the building) thinking, and may prove to be every bit as logistically challenging as the sophisticated pageantry of Christmas. Most such services at Easter will require at least a rudimentary P.A. system, and some may require some pretty advanced tech. Some churches do such sophisticated outdoor Easter services that it makes more sense for them to hire P.A., staging, and even lighting. In these cases, it just doesn’t make sense for the church to maintain their own in-house portable system. We won’t be discussing this scenario — we’re going to examine the development, care, and feeding of portable systems that are owned and operated by churches themselves.
The Mobile Church
Outside of the portable P.A. system requirements for Easter services, there are plenty of churches for whom portable technology is a weekly reality. There are many young church plants for whom a permanent location hasn’t happened just yet, so they find themselves setting up from scratch every Sunday morning — typically in a school gymnasium or movie theater or some other appropriate venue.
Starting at the front-end of the process, microphones are a necessity, and while “ruggedness” is the key word in all of live sound, it becomes even more important in the case of a portable system, and a new word — “roadworthiness” — creeps into our vernacular. The mics are manhandled on the platform, but they also suffer the rough-and-tumble process of being packed and unpacked and bounced around in a U-Haul trailer traveling between storage and church location every single week — sometimes more than once a week. This almost invariably means that the lion’s share of mics used in portable systems will be handheld dynamics — partially for their toughness, and partially for their versatility. Wireless is an option, but may be seen as a luxury for the portable system. If there is any wireless at all, it’s likely to be limited to just a lav or headworn attached to the head pastor and/or wireless handhelds used by a couple of key vocalists. The transmitters, batteries and other additional considerations here may dissuade the use of wireless in portable ministry.
The various signals emanating from the platform must be delivered to the front of house mixer somehow, so a snake is deployed. Traditionally, we find a 16 or 24 channel analog snake ranging from 50 to 100 feet in length, and these are bulky and heavy (two words we despise in relation to portable systems). More recently, digital snakes have become affordable, and are a very welcome antidote to the back-breaking labor associated with analog snakes. As for me, I’d much rather set up a run of Cat-6 than an inch-diameter beast.
In the Mix
Once we get signal from platform to FOH, we need a mixer. This is one domain in which we’ve enjoyed some very welcome advances. If we rewind to 20 years ago, it’s likely our mixer was accompanied at FOH by at least one rack full of outboard signal processing. In the modern era, however, we now have mixers that include dynamics per channel, and even built-in time-based processors: high quality reverbs, delays and other modulation effects. This goes a long way to save on back strain, and also speeds up the process of setting up and striking the system for storage. If the use of a digital mixer in the church’s permanent location makes sense, it makes even more sense for a portable system by virtue of how much technology is now right inside the mixer itself.
Another appealing feature of digital mixers is the possibility of mix-it-yourself monitoring. The prospect of a separate monitor mixer as part of a portable church deployment may be too much to ask, so monitor mixing frequently falls under the purview of the FOH mixer. But with digital mixers, it becomes plausible for musicians and vocalists to handle their own personal mix, with control boxes on the platform. Alternatively, if a sufficient Wi-Fi network is available at the venue (or better still, bring your own) they can mix with smartphones or tablets. Reducing the amount of necessary hardware (and stage clutter) is appealing in a portable system, so dialing in monitor mixes via smart devices is a nice way to go.
The 800-Pound Gorilla
Our examination of portable church audio finally comes around to the 800 lb. gorilla in the room… speakers and amplification. These are always the heaviest and bulkiest components of any portable P.A. system. Just as with all the other components, we have enjoyed some pretty marvelous advances in this domain as well. One of the key advances here is the development of powered loudspeakers. It is now plausible to provide plenty of SPL for church-sized venues with speakers containing their own amplifiers. This vastly improves the notion of portability, and can eliminate at least one or two large and very heavy road cases from the system. Obviously, amplification is still necessary, and has increased the weight of the speaker enclosures themselves, but advances in amplifier technology have improved the power-to-weight ratio substantially, making the P.A. lighter but still very capable. Another benefit that frequently accompanies self-powered speakers is onboard DSP. Your mixer doesn’t have drive-rack processing? Not to worry — many speakers offer their own EQ and dynamics, allowing us to tune the system to the room, and if we’re in the same space every Sunday morning, we can establish a response curve as a recallable preset.
And the Rest…
Obviously, aside from mics, snakes, mixers, and speakers, there are other important requirements in the development of a portable P.A. system. Notably, stands for mics and speakers are necessary, and no amount of scientific innovation that will ever replace them. And while innovations in wireless continue apace, the amount of available bandwidth continues to shrink, so we’ll still be carrying a lot of cabling with us for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, ongoing developments in technology have made the portable church a much simpler prospect than ever before, and it’s worth investing the money necessary to simplify (and improve) your church’s portable system, whether it be for one or two annual services away from the home sanctuary or a weekly service if you don’t yet have a home sanctuary.
John McJunkin is the chief engineer and staff producer in the studio at Grand Canyon University.
