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.
A video tutorial on mixing live sound for music performances, aimed at beginners in the art. (18 Videos)
This is the first video, click below for a link to the whole video series. This is the basics, but there is a lot of good information in the series. The videos are each fairly short so it goes quickly – I would recommend watching them no matter how long you have been mixing.
Why does the US Digital Television transition affect church wireless microphone (&IEM) usage? This is the crux of the abounding questions I get, punctuated by “The systems work just fine.” The simple answer is, If you have wireless systems that operate in the 700MHz range (698-806MHz) they need to be replaced. Full Story
We have worked hours on producing graphics for a particular moment in a service: an outline, a Scripture, the perfect illustration for a main sermon point. The time comes to put up the graphic, and the computer just won’t cooperate, the wrong button is hit, a popup freezes the screen… there is a fumble and a recovery, and the image is up in all its glory— but the speaker has moved on, and the image is no longer relevant. It distracts. Full Story
The reverberation response of the room at different frequencies is one key measurement to examine in room acoustic design. What proper acoustic control does in a room is create a “live” feeling space while minimizing room excitement and slap-back to the platform, terms describing the effect of sound waves bouncing between the walls of a room and towards the stage. Well designed acoustical treatments will make it easy for hearers to listen, improve musician’s and vocalists’ performance space and reduce feedback, and clarify the sound picked up by the microphones to carry through to the loudspeakers.
Controlling reverb for the hearers Acoustic control creates a good atmosphere for both musical worship and speech. Good control is making sure the spoken word is easy to hear while making sure the room is significantly lively for congregational worship. A singing congregation tends to sing more if they can hear themselves singing, thereby participating in worship. If the congregation can’t hear themselves singing, they tend to sing less; the atmosphere becomes more of a concert than worship. During speech- announcements, testimonies and sermons- it is critical to avoid ear fatigue.
Controlling reverb for the musicians and vocalists Slap-back, long delayed reflections back onto stage, tend to muddy the sound. This makes it harder for the musicians and vocalists to hear themselves (distinguish themselves in the mix) so the stage is forced to drive louder volume levels. This sound is then jumping all over the room, creating a lot of noise that few find comfortable or appealing and musicians find frustrating.
Controlling reverb for the audio system and its engineers The room acoustics need to work with the speaker system to keep the audio aimed on the congregation and absorb or properly disperse spill on the wall areas. The acoustics also need to help limit delayed sounds from bouncing back onto the stage and being picked up by the microphones, thus contributing to muddy sound and feedback problems. The ideal is a flat reverb where room acoustics are consistent across all frequencies (or pitch). When it comes to controlling sound, the acoustic device will be larger in size to accurately control larger frequencies (low tones) while higher frequencies (high tones) need smaller acoustic devices. Some of the room treatment will need to be fairly large, and these would be best placed on the large side walls or back walls above doors and windows. The mid to mid high frequencies are balanced with the smaller panels. Other treatment options include clouds (larger treatments on the ceiling), sprayed on materials, different wall construction techniques and curtains or other soft goods.
Sometimes overlapping goals of acoustics compete. The needs of speech, instrumental music, and congregational singing require compromises in the design of the acoustic package, keeping costs under control. The solution is to design acoustic packages that balance these needs and provide a cost effective solution that improves all these areas.
In my previous blog post (HERE) I mentioned I thought my lens may be part of my problem in achieving good pictures. After some more research, I purchased a 50mm prime lens (f/1.4) and had a chance to try it this evening. Wow, what a difference. This photo (of my beautiful wife) was taken by the light of the Christmas tree. A quick set and shoot. So there is hope for my photos after all.
had a very interesting experience today. I purchased my kids an inexpensive dell laptop (used) about a year ago and have regretted it ever since. This laptop was such a dog – slow, unresponsive and impossible to use if you had more than one program running. I tried everything – wipe the drive, install xp straight up (no manuf. junk), hardware test, etc, etc. This should be an okay computer – 1.5GHz mobile celeron (yea, I know, but cheap), 1gb memory, 256mb dedicated graphics, 80gb harddrive, but it never worked well enough to be very usable.
Then the power supply died. yup, that little brick of a powersupply. So the laptop sat around for a couple of months…. I decided I would sell it and see if I could get any of the cash I put in it back out…. but I wanted to make sure it just needed a new power supply – so, I grabed a power supply off a HP laptop we have at church…. simular specs, simular plug…. wow, all of a sudden this computer actually works! I can even draw in Sketchup while I run an anti-virus scan. Could it have had a bad power supply all along?
Just a quick post – a couple very helpful and useful tools.
Need to take and organize notes? Several different people all suggested Evernote to me recently, so I signed up and wow, I really like it – very handy. It is software / webware / pdaware enabled and seems to go a great job keeping everything in sync!
And love drawing and organizing in Visio but can’t afford it? Check out Dia (sorry, not available for mac at this time….. still looking for a free alternative)
thank you to all who passed along these great programs to me!
With the failure of the primary video projector during service this week, now is a good time to re-examine the practical aspects of how to choose a projector.
Why do we need such an expense as a projector? When choosing an appropriate projection system one must consider the needs to be met and choose the components to satisfy those requirements. Light, room and screen size, and resolution are the variables to be considered.
The lighting conditions in the space will determine how bright the projection image must be to be seen clearly and with proper colors and definition. Just as the light from the projector reflects off the screen so one can see an image, the light in the room also is reflecting off the screen (usually WHITE light), competing in brightness with the image. Add to this a fundamental problem with projection – with dark areas of the video or image, you are trying to make a WHITE screen surface appear BLACK! Luckily, eyes have a limited range of sense from the brightest area of an image to the darkest area, so all we have to do is make what is suppose to be white or bright much brighter than the areas that are suppose to be dark or black. How bright of a projector that is required to do this depends on how much room light is reflecting off the screen causing the darker areas to be light. A movie theater is relatively dark, so it doesn’t take a real powerful projector to make the bright areas much brighter than the dark areas. A sanctuary and platform with lots of bright lights, however, requires a bright powerful projector to produce an image.
The size of the screen also determines how big a projector is needed. A finite amount of light comes out of the lens of the projector (measured in Lumens) and begins to spread. The farther the screen from the projector, the more the light has spread out and the larger the image. The problem is that finite amount of light is spread out over a larger and larger surface area, thus the amount of light reflecting back from any one area of the image is less and less. This is why a larger screen requires a more powerful projector than a small screen.
The viewing environment and use of the screen determines the size of the screen. A screen for a movie needs to be big enough to envelop the audience, to transport them into the movie and help them forget they are sitting in a theater with a couple hundred other people. A screen for a presentation needs to be large enough that the people sitting farthest from the screen can see and understand the images being shown. A screen for displaying lyrics and scriptures needs to be large enough that six to eight lines of text easily fit and can be read from the back of the room. Studies have shown that the optimal height of the screen should be 1/6th to 1/8th the distance to the last row of seats. For a sanctuary where the last row of seats is 120 feet away, this translates to a screen that is 15 to 20 feet tall. But don’t forget the front row, if the screen is too big they will not be able to view the entire screen from edge to edge, so the distance to the back row should be balanced with the distance to the front row, or more than one screen should be used, each covering different viewing areas. The width of the first row also effects the screen size and placement choices. As with many other things technical, tradeoffs need to be balanced in choosing the screen size.
How close the congregation is to the screen determines the need for resolution of the image. The closer people are to the screen, the more likely they will be able to see the individual pixels that make up the image. The larger the projected image is, the larger these pixel blocks are. Seeing individual pixels causes images and text to look jagged and grainy. With projection and other digital images there is also the “screen door” effect, where the black lines between individual pixels break up the image. When combined with motion video, this causes annoying artifacts for some, while other people are so sensitive to it as to feel motion sick – not the best atmosphere for worship. Those who study such things and set standards have determined the required resolution versus seating distances, based upon the human eye’s ability to discern the height of an image at a given distance. These standards can be applied to select the required resolution for the projection system.
Why won’t a consumer, portable projector work? There are advertisements from the popular computer manufacturer or office supply house for inexpensive projectors that seem very bright. It is tempting to think that a thousand dollar projector will serve the congregation instead of spending tens of thousand dollars on a large venue projector, but that is seldom a satisfactory solution. There are some big differences between the consumer grade projector and the venue grade projector.
Large venue projectors can accept a wide range of lenses, so the proper lens can be chosen based upon the screen size and the best location to mount the projector. Portable projectors have a built in lens, which has a limited zoom range, limiting the distance from the screen these can be mounted. Because these projectors are often designed to be set up in conference rooms and class rooms front and center, the zoom range of the lens is designed to set the projector close to the screen – often impractical in a church sanctuary that holds more than 200 people (the typical size of a conference or class room).
Larger projectors are often designed for quiet and continuous operation, while portable projectors of often designed to be small and light weight. The consumer, portable projector uses noisy cooling fans to move a lot of air to keep them cool enough for short term use, but may overheat easier during long periods of operation.
Large venue projectors start at 4000 – 5000 lumens and are available up to 30,000 lumens plus, where as portable projectors typically are only available up to 3000 – 5000 lumens of brightness. As we have seen above, sanctuaries and worship centers often require much brighter projectors than a home theater or conference room, with the typical large screen requiring 10,000 to 12,000 lumens, much brighter than most portable projectors can provide.
There are many other specifications and room design factors that can help determine the right projector for the job, beyond the scope of this article, but the intent here is to give an overview of projection and the practical aspects of implementing it in a house of worship. For more information about projection systems, contact a church media consultant such as myself (jeff@essentricaudio.com) or let me suggest a design build firm such as Stark Raving Solution and let us design the right projection system.
Cast? What Cast? podcast, vodcast, RSS feeds of various types – See, I ask because I know that a majority of you still just read what you want, when you want it using your web-browser. I have recently converted myself from one who just checked in when I felt like it, to one who subscribes to the feeds.
I resisted the movement for a long time – I figured the fad would pass, it was just a waste of time, I really didn’t need it, would not use it. Boy was I wrong. Everyone is blogging and podcasting. I even have heard that some church staff members are creating internal podcast just for their team members to improve communication. Now there is a thought – where is my microphone?
So what am I using?
iTunes for all the media content feeds (podcast / vodcast)
It is nice to always have media I want to listen to ready on my iPod, and when I just have a minute and want to catch up on new, open Vienna and see what the latest is at all the sites I like to visit.
Step 1: Managed network switch – Netgear GS108Tv2 switch will allow setup of multiple VLANs for managing network traffic.
Step 2: Small PC to setup as a firewall / router – Jetway Quad Lan / Fanless Case (don’t forget to add a small SSD harddrive)
Step 3: Install and Setup PFSense as the firewall software / OS
Now here is where the trouble begins: the Google Fiber Network box can’t be put into bridge mode… so it looked like the only answer was to double NAT, not a good solution…. until this came along:
Spent a good part of my weekend improving our online security. One big part of this improvement was to tighten up some of my online accounts. We have all seen the new stories of the massive data breeches, the stolen credit card data, the big hacks & wide scale identity theft. And while we need to be careful, there is not a lot we can do with our data that other people have. But what we can improve is the security of the small things.
So Google fiber is here, you would think that would be enough. But consider our crowdedhouse. Our network not only serves our family (which admittedly is larger than average, ranging between 9 and 11 people depending on the day, your definition of family and my general attitude), but the network also serves our carriage house apartment, 3 guest rooms being used by long and short term guest and whoever is couch-surfing in the basement at the time. Add up all these users and all their devices plus the odd server or six we tend to run, and we have 25-35 devices on the network at any one time. Supporting this network has become quite the job.
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?
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.
Church bulletins are calling people to the Lenten season of reflection and preparation for Holy Week and the most important Christian holy day, Resurrection Sunday. This season is a time when the technical staff can get stressed out, because we know if anything goes wrong, everyone will look at us.
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.
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.