Please don’t be the resident expert!
I have heard so many horror stories about how the work of a well-qualified, experienced consultant, system designer or sound contractor has been thwarted by well-meaning volunteers in the audio ministry at a local church.
Typically their motives are properly placed and applied with a genuine desire to help.
But all too often their lack of thorough knowledge in some technical area causes them to stumble through a procedure with precarious results.
Optimizing the frequency response of a loudspeaker system with an equalizer and other tools is fairly academic to a trained technician who is equipped with the proper test equipment.
Having such a person periodically adjust the house EQ of a sound system is an appropriate maintenance routine, and is worth the few hundred dollars it may cost the church.
Consider it an investment, not a cost. Once properly equalized, the audio ministry should be able to operate the system with a great deal of flexibility and little fear of feedback.
However, the system can be operated improperly, with an attempt to take it beyond what it is capable of. This is generally where the trouble begins.
The next step is to assume that the equalizer or some other peripheral piece of equipment that was called out in the design, properly installed and set, needs further adjustment. The next failure is to reason that the tech shouldn’t be called back in – after all, he’s always too busy to return your calls, and he costs too much money anyway.
Step three in this breakdown is not recognizing that one may know only enough about the procedure to be dangerous, and setting out to fix it oneself anyway. Maybe even with reinforcements, like Sidney.
Several weeks (in some cases months) later, you go ahead and call in that tech or some other consultant to resolve the problem. I have been called in countless times as a consultant to resolve the problems created by Wilbur.
On some projects, I’ve been called in two or three times to fix the same problem that mysteriously keeps reappearing. Wilbur either didn’t understand something about the overall problem, incorrectly analyzed the problem, or he just had an overwhelming need to twiddle the knobs himself.
What that does in the long run is cost the church more money than it needed to spend to keep bringing a consultant back in. It could even be a factor in letting that lost soul who is finally planning to attend your church this weekend slip through your hands.
Please hear my heart. My intent here is to lift and edify my brothers and sisters in the technical support ministries.
If you’re a Wilbur, learn from my gentle reproof. Realize that I’m not talking to the guys/gals who have seriously gone after their study of all things audio. There are many church techs these days who have studied audio very in depth, even at the college level, and they very likely know what they’re doing. Deep down you know if you’re a Wilbur or not. If you’re a Sidney, talk some sense into your Wilbur. And if you’re neither one, you’ll even more clearly understand my heart. God bless you in your service to Him!
There are a myriad of options for training in the basics of audio, and specifically for church techs.
When I first started training church sound techs in 1982, I was one of only two or three individuals in the US who were offering such classes nationwide. Now there are so many options it’s hard to know which ones are worthwhile attending and which ones to stay away from. But do your research and get some quality training. It will only help the techs, and in turn the worship team, pastoral staff and the congregation.
In fact, you can start learning the right way right now by ordering my training materials. Or join us at one of our ChurchSoundBootCamp.com training classes.
Copyright 2011. Original article appeared in the Fall 1987 issue of Clarity Magazine, published by Taipale Media Systems, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Read the original article here.