Buying loudspeakers is perhaps the most daunting task a church tech will face.
Today we have powered and unpowered loudspeakers; line arrays and point source boxes; flown and ground stacked; cheap and eye-watering expensive. In each of those categories, we have dozens of manufacturers with hundreds of models to choose from.
While it’s not possible in the space of this article to tell you what to buy, we will attempt to guide you through the process of selecting the proper loudspeakers for your space.
The Perfect Loudspeaker
First, there is no perfect loudspeaker. All designs make compromises in deference to the laws of physics. The right loudspeaker for one room might well be entirely the wrong one for another room.
Don’t get sucked into the trap of thinking that the loudspeakers in the church that put on that big conference are the right ones for you. They may be, but they also may not be.
Second, once you get beyond putting up one or two loudspeakers in a small room, I believe there needs to be some design involved. A competent integrator should be able to model the room and show you some options based on prediction software and help narrow down your choices.
Far too many churches make the mistake of just hanging some boxes in the room, pointing them wherever and hoping it sounds good. From experience, I can tell you that most of the time it doesn’t. Plan on spending at least some of your loudspeaker budget on an actual design. You can thank me later.
As I said, there is no “best” loudspeaker. What you want is what’s right for your environment. To get to that right loudspeaker, we have to ask some questions, and determine what we are trying to accomplish. Once we know the intended result, we can begin to make a selection that will effectively deliver the results.
It’s much like buying a vehicle; you wouldn’t buy a two-seater convertible if you intend to haul around a lot of mulch. Then again, a pickup would probably not be the best choice to drive a large family to baseball practice. With that in mind, let’s ask some questions.
