You need to design your system. As we talked about on this week’s show, we keep hearing form tech guys at churches about to embark on building projects, but the leadership doesn’t want to spend any money on a professional design, or buy any new equipment. They’d rather “figure it out later,” reusing equipment that may already be in use in a portable or smaller venue.
Jamie pointed out that getting a system to sound pretty good when playing music isn’t that hard. Even poorly implemented systems can be tweaked to sound decent for the band, especially when the band is in the room. But intelligibility, that’s hard. That takes design. And here is where the aforementioned leadership is missing the boat.
Most pastors think the tech guy wants to get a good PA so the music will be “awesome!!” However, the real reason we want a good design is so people can hear the message. For most services, we spend 75 percent of our time on spoken word. Getting even intelligibility throughout the seating area takes a good design that uses the right gear that is installed properly. Why would pastors not be interested in that?
Put another way. What if we said to the pastor, “Since you only want me to recycle this inadequate equipment in a room for which it was never designed, I can pretty much guarantee that 75 percent of the congregation should likely hear 50 percent of what you say every week. You OK with that?” That’s what we’re talking about here.
I think we really need to be focusing on intelligibility when we have these conversations. I know that is what sold our leadership on the need for a new PA (and hopefully we’ll actually get it installed this year).
There was so much more to the class; we talked a lot about frequency, phase, impulse response, time constants, and a dozen other concepts that helped me understand the implications of what I do every week.
In some cases, it was a great reinforcement. In other cases, my approach will be changed. I came home tired and ready to not think about sound for a few hours.
However, it was a great three days, and I highly recommend anyone who can get to a class to go. It’s not cheap, but when I consider the amount of knowledge I gained in three days, it was a bargain.
By the way, you can find out more about Rational Acoustics Smaart training and the latest course schedule here.
Mike Sessler is the Technical Director at Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo, CA. He has been involved in live production for over 20 years and is the author of the blog, Church Tech Arts . He also hosts a weekly podcast called Church Tech Weekly on the TechArtsNetwork.