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Sound Sanctuary

‘Tis The Season to be Mixing

If you’re a regular reader, you know that every holiday season, I give my personal insight and advice. This year I will be doing the same, but I also want to add my views on portable speakers and how I have used them during this time and beyond. The Christmas season (or Hanukkah season for many of you) starts for me right after Halloween. I always have a gig on Oct. 31 and, right after that, I start to schedule my duties for the holiday season. The last few years I have limited my actual mixing commitments to one house of worship on Christmas Eve and one on Christmas day. That said, there are still a lot of potential gigs (mainly holiday parties) leading up to the big day. That is where having a healthy assortment of speakers on a stick (tripod) in my arsenal comes in very handy.

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Acoustical absorbers (such as the panels shown here) attached to a highly reflective “hard” wall surface can help break up sound waves that strike it, thus reducing echoes for a cleaner sound with improved vocal intelligibility.

Improve The Acoustics, Improve The Sound

Let me begin by saying that 99 percent of the churches that I have I worked in were built before I was born. So what does this little bit of information have to do with this month’s Sound Sanctuary? Well, the fact is that most houses of worship were originally built without much concern for the acoustic environment inside the finished building. And until recently, many of these facilities built in this country (and the world for that matter) were constructed with little or no consideration as to how the spoken word and music will sound during a typical service.

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Sennheiser’s ew 300 IEM G3 wireless in-ear system ($1,199/street) includes transmitter, two bodypack receivers, two IE4 earbuds and rackmount kit.

In-Ear Monitors

I have been involved with house of worship audio, sound systems and performing for almost two decades now. The reason I am starting this month’s Sound Sanctuary with this statement is because when I began installing church sound systems and singing in choirs, “in-ear monitors” (IEMs) were rarely used in live performance, and hardly the day-to-day item in many of today’s concert systems.

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An SPL meter app (such as this one from Studio Six Digital) is a valuable tool in evaluating volume levels in your sanctuary.

How Loud is LOUD?!

Before we get into this month’s topic, I should say that audio techs are a relatively new breed. Not long ago, your average church, synagogue or temple did not have a sound system. As a child I went to a Catholic church. The priest would enter the pulpit (a small tower on the left side of the church three or four feet above the platform/altar), climb half a dozen steps and deliver his sermon from this location.

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On toms and snares, a cardioid dynamic (such as this Sennheiser e904) — placed slightly above and near the edge of the drum head — offers good tone with little bleed or feedback problems.

Microphone Techniques for Houses of Worship

Probably the most overlooked issue in house of worship audio is the placement of the all-important microphone. This issue is mostly confined to instrument microphones and choir mics. With regards to speaking and individual singing mic placement, the issue here is usually the end user. However, we will discuss this later. For now, let’s turn our attention to instrument miking techniques. There are a few different ways to mic almost every instrument. So I am going to tell you my tried and true methods, whether it be drums, guitars, bass, brass, etc.

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Launched in 1939, the Shure Unidyne 55 was a mainstay on church pulpits for decades.

Podium Microphones

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. A short time after the beginning, God needed a whole bunch of preachers to get the word out. Well, most of the preachers asked for podiums. And we all know, if you have a podium, you will probably need a podium mic. So, before we knew it, podium microphones had arrived. This is essentially an abbreviated version of how these things came about, but I think it’s fairly accurate.

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How to Make Your Worship Services Sound Better

For many of you, this month’s installment may seem a little redundant, as I’ve written about this subject in the past. But before you turn the page, hear me out. Our main job as audio technicians is to make the service sound as good as it possibly can. In reality, almost all my Sound Sanctuary writing is designed to that end. Making great sound is important to me, as I am sure it is for you.

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Soundcraft Vi6 at Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, IL

Large Consoles

Last month, I wrote about the uses of small format consoles in houses of worship. So it would only make sense for me to focus on large format consoles this month. Actually, I will be writing about large and mid-sized consoles. For the purposes of this article, I’ll assume that you are looking for — or at least dreaming about — a bigger board for your sanctuary, and preferably a console with more channels, more aux sends, more features and generally more bells and whistles.

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Small Consoles

This month’s discussion is on small-format mixing consoles for houses of worship, both analog and digital.

There are probably a few different definitions for “small format” consoles. To me, any mixer that can fit into a rack would fall into the category.

That said, if your worship house mixer is not in a rack, don’t worry about it. We still have plenty to talk about.

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Easter Extras

There is no doubt that Christmas and Easter are the two biggest and most celebrated holidays in the Christian/Catholic faith. And my church, like many others, always puts on a big production and celebration that reflects the importance of these special holidays. So, here you are with Easter just around the corner, and you suddenly realize that it will take a lot more gear to put on the event that you have planned for your house of worship. So, what are you going to do?

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Lavaliere and Headset Microphones

My uncle is a Jesuit priest. You may ask yourself what that has to do with this month’s topic. Well, my good ol’ uncle Bud (the priest) would never consider using a lav or a headset microphone; mainly because Bud has been in the priest biz for nearly 45 years and is very old-school in his approach to preaching. He delivers his sermons from a podium with one microphone, and that’s that. On the other hand, the pastor at my home church would never consider using a headset mic. He is very comfortable wearing a lav microphone when he preachers.

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Column Speakers

Happy New Year to all of you. By the time you read this I will either have been to the winter NAMM show or be on my way. The reason I am mentioning NAMM (other than the fact that it takes place in January) is that it is my favorite place to look at new gear for my sound business. I am particularly interested in column speakers this year. (I must mention that InfoComm would also be a great place to look for this type of speaker enclosure.) Anyway, I am specifically looking at architectural speakers that can be installed in a house of worship.

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