The PSW Church Sound Forum is a free, on-line resource for information and dialog for individuals working with sound at their churches.

Moderated by Tom Young, a highly respected A/V consultant (and PSW author) with decades of experience, users get numerous “best” answers and options to their questions about sound, equipment, systems, staff issues and more.

The following Church Sound Forum discussion thread is packed with useful advise from the community.

SUBJECT: CHURCH SOUND SYSTEM CONCERNS

Question Posted By Kevin
What would you say is the number one concern that a church may go through when purchasing new equipment?

Reply By Dan
People who don’t know what they’re doing and have some misguided notion about what a system should do, cost and/or look like. If you take care of the people problems, everything else will fall into place.

Reply By Dave
Sad, but true. Another main concern is trusting the company who is advising them, as many churches have little expertise in the field of sound & lighting. I know my church has been bitten once or twice by people who really know their stuff but have recommended things that are cheap and easy to install, which didn’t do the job or solve the problem. These mistakes can be expensive.

Reply By Bob
Clearly defining what they want the system to do now, six months from now, and two to three years later. Then comes BUDGET. For some reason, budget seems to be set first, before the system requirements are spelled out. Usually it’s better to wait until funds can be raised to meet the system requirements than to buy what is in the budget now.

Reply By Mac
Thank you. This is the heart of the matter. It’s so frustrating to see all the posts (on the forum) saying we have “X” amount of money, so what should we buy? Another issue that is almost always ignored is the cost of design and installation. Spending all your money on a bunch of gear - no matter how good the gear - does not make a good system.

Reply By Clark
I can attest to that. We’re in the middle of a renovation. The first budgetary numbers is what they always come back to, forgetting that they added $30,000 worth of stuff we “can’t do without.”

Reply By Ivan
I would agree to some point, however, spending a lot on an improperly designed (over-designed in some areas and totally missing the most important issues) is something I see quite often. In many cases, the customer could have spent less and ended up with a better performing system.

This is not to say that you can do it cheap, I just see way too often sound systems that (as designed) do not have proper coverage, enough gain before feedback and etc., but are full of almost useless “fluff” that drives the cost way up. People can’t hear it properly, but they have lots of “cool expensive” toys to play with.

Reply By Pacman
I think the number one concern is proper planning (long term - think five-plus years out) and deciding before purchasing exactly what you want the system/room to do.

In our case, we originally designed the system (11 years old now) for a typical service, which meant a choir, a couple of singers, a piano, perhaps an organ/keyboard for music, and a pastor speaking.

This allowed our contractor to determine what we needed, and the architect also designed the platform to “amplify” acoustic sound with a baffled ceiling (to help the choir sound bigger).

Now we’ve changed in 11 years (as many churches do), running a full band with a small choir - totally different than designed, and we’re paying a price.

We are looking into what we can do to redesign, but if we had looked further out than a couple of years when planning, we would have installed a different system and saved ourselves the issues we have now.

Reply By Willy
If possible, visit other local churches that have the same type of worship environment. Maybe even call ahead of time and speak to someone about the satisfaction level with their current system.

While there, take a good look at the shape of the space. Listen intently as you sit, and if possible, move to different locations or have some other people with you to sit in different places. After the service is over, make arrangements to talk to the person who dealt with the sound contractor responsible for the system.

If you liked what you saw and heard, you’ll have a good head start in the right direction.

I know quite a bit about sound and connections and how things work, but I would not even want to attempt designing something that works in a big, complicated space. It truly takes an expert.

The acoustics are probably the number factor for getting good sound. If this is overlooked, the chances are slim of getting something that functions well.

Reply By CR
We had a set of consultants that we let go, not due to technical knowledge but due to their inability to understand what we were trying to achieve. They were very nice people, they knew their stuff for sure, but they just couldn’t get the church leaders here to “buy into” their vision for our equipment needs.

The second group of consultants spoke our leaders’ “language” and embraced our church’s vision better. We immediately hired them and moved forward. From my standpoint as the tech director, both companies would give us a quality system, the difference is in the paradigm used.

As a customer, my job was to thoroughly examine what and how we do things here, and communicate that as precisely as possible to the design people. A gear list isn’t going to do that, you need to try to understand your church’s “culture” at a very deep level.

I spent much more time trying to do this than obsessing over which loudspeakers/mixers/mics and etc. that we would need. The root purpose drives everything else tied to it.

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