Moderator: Ray - one of the topics that seems to hit a hot button with many in the audience is feedback eliminators. What's your view on these devices?

Ray: They are fine to gain a little more feedback resistance in a properly tuned and adjusted system but are often tried as replacements for fixing other problems that are better fixed in other ways.

Moderator: Hi Charlie Hughes - sorry your question was answered as you were submitting. Feel free to jump in with another.

Moderator: From Zim, addressing another topic that comes up frequently: What are the best educational resources for church technical staff?

Ray: For education, you should start at www.churchsoundcheck.com. They are devoted to just this thing. Next join their discussion group. If you want even more technical training, asking on the discussion group will get you many leads, depending on exactly what your interests are.

Moderator: What do you see as the biggest barrier to churches getting better sound systems?

Ray: The biggest barrier is the church leadership deciding that good sound is important. Once they have made it a priority then things can get fixed. Until then, you are pushing on a rope. Talk to the leaders and get them to consider the issue. If they put importance on preaching, then the preaching must be clearly understood, or they are fooling themselves. If they put importance on the music, then the music must be of good quality or people will feel they get better from their stereo or the local theater.

TC: Do you agree with the current advances in standardizing network communications of audio equipment? What’s good and what’s bad?

Ray: Well there has not been a lot of advances in this area. Everyone still has their own idea as to the best approach. This is still one of the weak links in the future Virtual Sound System. At Peak we have pushed using SNMP but not all of our CobraNet licensees have
gone that way yet.

Moderator: Do you think there will ever be "total" agreement and standardization? If so, what will drive this?

Ray: The users want products they can plug together and interoperate. They also want to be able to bring controls from different manufacturer's products into a single user control screen or virtual control surface. Now today we do this using AMX or Crestron control systems. But it would be so much better if there was enough unity in the basic control protocol of the products that an external system such as we use today would not be needed in many cases.