Hi, I'm Jeff. This is my personal blog – random thoughts on Media, the church, the arts, popular culture, being a husband and father and about any other thought that comes to mind.
At Infocomm09 last week, I had the privilege of teaching a session titled Managing Stage Volumes for Technology for Worship Magazine. In that session I addressed this issue experienced universally- the stage that is too loud.
Too loud on the stage cannot be measured in dB. What’s too loud for one person is fine for another- and most often musicians ask for “more.” Generally, it’s understood that feedback is what happens if the stage is too loud (although that’s not an accurate understanding). The true problem with a loud stage is ambient bleed which means a muddy house mix, and another problem- something not always considered- is hearing damage. Usually communication and education with the proper application of technology can manage stage volumes nicely.
I will try and address these thoughts over a couple upcoming blog post – (see links below)
What should the stage dB be? (Managing Stage Volume part 2) – Click Here
Our media team does a great job, better than average as a matter of fact. According to a recent poll on churchmedia.net, most media teams experience 5 or more “errors” per service related to projection, audio and video cues and content prepared for the services. I would say our average is closer to 3. Yet some members of the team get stresses out every time we talk about excellence, striving for excellence or praying for excellence. Has “excellence” become a dirty word?
Trash everywhere. That is one thing I am noticing about this urban living. Sure, Main street is nice and clean, but that is because people are paid to keep the trash cleaned up. What about the rest of the streets we live on? Who is responsible to cleaning them up? Full Story
In general, we have found that the median life cycle of audio equipment is around 10 years. Some pieces will last longer, others will require maintenance or refreshing to continue to perform to specs and some things will need replaced much sooner. Environment, handling and maintenance, and materials and workmanship directly affect longevity of components. Indirectly, the experiences and expectations of people effectively shorten product efficacy.You could call this the “inside, outside, upside down” theory of life cycle of audio systems.A worship facility is not just another performing arts space. As the spoken Word- the sermon- is at once equal to and yet higher than the “singing of hymns, psalms and spiritual songs” it is therefore neither lecture hall nor concert space, but Worship Facility. Designing the Worship Facility means to design a space that supports speech as well as music. Full Story
During our last move we left behind a spotlight that had been used for a college touring choir since 1976. It was a used donation when they got it, and it was still being used for special productions in a technologically geriatric setting [stored under risers and used once a year] at a large Baptist church. In finance circles, there has long been a mantra that leasing is not good stewardship. People want to own homes, not lease, to build equity. Buying a car, not leasing, is said to be less expensive in the long run. So why would I promote leasing equipment? You do want to purchase the durable workhorse whose technology remains steady- predictable and reliable. Things susceptible to needing upgrades and becoming outdated should be leased. Here are four points to consider when deciding to buy or lease equipment. Full Story
If technology used in the church is of poor quality (in the eyes of those attending), it will tend to reflect poorly on the message, evening cheapening the message. If the technology is too glitzy and fancy (again, in the eyes of those attending), it will make the message feel more like a story, entertainment, even fantasy. We want to get the right system into the right church to give the right message while recognizing that the real question being asked is, ”But, how can we make the most of available resources?”
How can I mic our choir so we can hear them? We are hearing the orchastra / band through the choir mics and if we turn up the choir any more we get feedback. We currently have six AKG CK47 mics suspended above the choirloft. Do we need new mics?
… I wanted to talk through a couple of the issues and my thoughts on the solution of your choir mic problem. Your setup and arrangement is very similar to what we had at High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin where I was on staff and we battled with some of the same issues.
Full Story
I have a lot of cassettes I want to copy to CD. I’ve been using my cassette deck into the stereo system into an old desktop running Audacity because it has a line in jack. Unfortunately, the wife does not think the desktop adds to the decor of the living room.
Can a laptop record through the mic jack? Thanks.
The Mic in jack on laptops is usually lower quality / higher noise (for line level signals because of the higher gain), and often the mic jacks are not even stereo input…. some laptops can select the jack to be line or mic in (such as some Mac Book Pros and other higher end laptops) -these might work fine. You might check and see if your laptop has that option in the audio properties.
You tend to get better results using an external usb or firewire audio device, and one that is “good enough” for cassettes are fairly inexpensive ($30 ish) and a quick trip to the local computer superstore is worth the time.
Working on some detailed post, but in boiled down to God prepared our hearts, then we attended this little conference called verge and everything we knew was wrecked as we were fast-tracked to where we were suppose to be. This 7 minute video from the conference is a good introduction to our journey.
Question:
Jeff, I have been having trouble with achieving a good quality sound from our lavaliere systems, both ear set and chest clipped. I am not new to ringing out problem frequencies, but the problems are coming from across the entire band and there are many of them. We are using four downstage EAW micro wedge (the older versions) as our monitoring and I don’t get a loud enough volume through them before they feedback. We had a special guest speaker last week and his volume just wasn’t loud enough, but there was no way to achieve a louder volume without feedback. I would try placing the monitors in a different location, but the microphones are Omni so this wont help much. I’ve tried using a graphic EQ inserted on the channel and I am still having to use the parametric to do more surgical work instead of being able to use it to shape the butchered sound musically. Every time I complain about the volume level, I am told by my boss that the volume is fine, and it’s not. I get complaints from the lead and worship pastor about this nearly every week and I am running out of ideas. What do you think about this? Also, I heard that it is not good to use compression on lavaliere type of mics because they contribute to these specified problems. Is there any truth to this? I am using a compressor, but I am only compressing 3:1 at an average of 2-5db(max) gain reduction. Oh, and of course I’ve tried flipping the phase. Right now i have gone with using just the onboard parametric EQ and bypassing the graphic. I get a decent sound, but i need about 5db more headroom onstage and out front. Do you have any ideas?
Answer:
Tough job~
- loud environments (like having to provide foldback through stage wedges) almost always will require a direction mic. The Omni-direction sound better and are much less sensitive to exact placement and aiming, so I prefer to use them, but when you add wedges, when you add instruments or other sounds around the speaker / singer – then you are going to have much better results with direction mics.
- Remember the science – the closer to the source the less gain required. Also, the less of the sound from the mic returning to the mic, the more gain before feedback available. Use the pickup pattern of the mics, the polar patern of the speakers and watch for reflections (off the pulpit or other large surfaces–stage??). You can get 3db more gain by decreasing by half the distance between the mic and the mouth (6db with a directional mic).
- Once you get to the point where multiple frequencies are ringing at the same point (broadband), there is not much more you can do electronically. I usally call it quits at 6-8 specific notch filters (for any one mic / system).
- Compressors can cause problems if not used carefully. You have to be careful the input is stable at the gain setpoint with the compressor wide open – then you can use the compressor on top of that to pull down or “level” loud voices / yelling / etc. The problem often occurs in dialing in the compressor and gain while the input is under compression, then when it get quiet, the compressor opens up, adding an additional 3-9db gain to the channel, and it starts to ring.
- Gates (downward expander really) can help also, by dropping the gain of the channel 3 or 6 db when it is quiet, keeping a system that is on the edge from building up the ring.
- Quality equipment – obviously the higher quality of components, the better results you will get with all of this. One of the things you get with better equipment is smoother frequency responses and better / cleaner off axis rejection / pattern control / noise immunity. These properties can all help improve your gain to feedback ratios.
Hopefully that is helpful. No real magic bullet, just applying science and art carefully. Let me know if you need help brainstorming any other ideas for solutions or answering questions.
Short film with the most product (logo) placement ever
very creative.
Sweet music video – but simple enough for anyone to use the idea:
(from Brian Johnson – whole album here)
[sorry, the owner of the video has taken it off line - Here is a link to a youtube recording of it]
The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.
