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.
What is the solution to the problem of too high of a sound level on the stage? “Turn it down” of course. We all know that is easier said than done in reality, and have already looked at some of the reasons why. The next step then is to start working through these issues and “turning down” the volume. Full Story
We all occasionally have issues with our computer system freezing up, and it is no different with our fancy video production computers with which we switch the cameras for the video feed at church. However, when one of the video computers at church locks up, it tends to affect a lot of people, distracting them or preventing them from participating in the service, so we go to great lengths to make the video computer systems as reliable as possible.
Full Story
“My bass amp goes to 11 and it sounds best there.”
The truth of the matter is music, what makes a good mix and what sounds good are all subjective and relative to both the context and personal opinion of those listening. Full Story
Started to write this article then found someone had already done it for me:
Top 10 Reasons for Bad Sound (and what you can do about them)
give it a read and let me know if you agree- I will add my comments later.
“Should we have it at 95dB?” “They put it at 95 but that’s too loud.” “85?” “You should have heard them rockin, they pushed it to 105 the whole time.” “Where should we have it?” Full Story
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
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
Do you have a pre-screening type of method? In the past we have taken anyone who has been willing to volunteer. This has given us poor results. We found that willing does not mean capable even after training has been given. Seems the recruits need to possess certain natural abilities. More than willingness, faithfulness is very important. Musical ability is very helpful. The best screening that I have found is to recruit for several positions (sound, projection and setup/tear down crew for example), then as you work with the people find where they will fit best. If one has good ears and good technical chops and always show up, it’s a soundtech. Another is extremely faithful but hard of hearing, projection. A third is strong and reliable…. a perfect help for the setup crew. Once we have a group who has responded to recruiting efforts, we have a better indication of what type of training would suit our group.
We just did a recruitment drive at High Pointe this winter. We placed the following in the bulletin:
Full Story
Okay, this was so great I just had to blog about it.
Late last week the trackpad button on my MacBook Pro was stuck… would not click. While investigating, I found my battery was swollen up, bulging up against the underside of the trackpad, keeping it from clicking. I removed the battery – it showed a full charge, but it has not been working right, dying at 30% charge, so I now knew what the real problem was. I put off calling Apple as I was busy.
So Today (Monday) I realize I have a trip coming up and I really need a battery. A quick look online, nope, will not get here in time – guess I need to run over to the Apple Store. I have heard some people have had good luck getting their batteries replaced under warranty, but those were newer computers, and most as old as mine just had to pay for a replacement battery (although my computer is still under the Applecare warranty.)
I arrived at The Domain around 1, and it is crowded – everyone is enjoying the nice weather after a couple days of winter. The Apple store is really crowded. I make my way towards the back when I get stopped by a guy in an orange shirt, “Can I help you sir?” “Um yea, I have a little problem” as I show him the battery, which is now split open. “Right over here, we can help you.”
My battery gets handed to a couple Geniuses, one to the next, finally a young lady says she just needs to check with a manager real quick, glances across the room and apparently got the nod – okay. The she explains to me that I really need an appointment, but since they don’t have any appointments available in the near future (SXSW maybe?) she would get someone to take care of it, just wait right there, it may be a few minutes.
Well before I can even get my iPhone unlocked, someone ask me for my battery, grabs a new one off the shelf behind me and ask me to go ahead and open it up as I follow him. We walk back to the counter, I snap the new battery in my MacBook as he scans the info, gets my name, zipcode and verifies my laptop is still under warranty. There you are, good to go.
And all of that took less time than it took for you to read this post. I am happy. My computer is happy.
I get questions about our broadcast and recording mixes, and thought I would try to answer some here. Some of these apply to our live mix as well.
“I know we are just hearing the mic’d voices, but even in that a particular voice will stand out strongly above the others, which sometimes is not good.”
There are really a couple issues here.
1) The first problem is when the vocals just aren’t mixed right. This is very evident early during rehearsal where we are slowly dialing everything in a piece at a time, adjusting and re-adjusting. But by the end of rehearsal, or the end of the first song, this should not be a problem – unless
2) If the vocals are well mixed, often the person slipping out of key will stand out like a sore thumb. If the vocals have been blended well and they are all singing together, if one person is challenged by the song, they will stick out when they can’t quite get to that note, sounding louder than the rest of the group, even though they have been (and still are) blended in.
3) Sometimes people are just a challenge to keep mixed. We are dealing with 56+ channels of audio, trying to keep up with an ever changing landscape of sound. Theoretically, once everything is mixed, they should stay mixed, but in reality that doesn’t happen at all. Each song, each section of the songs require minor changes in the mix, not to mention changing styles, order of service etc. Throw on top of this challenging people, and they are going to stand out. This includes several who blend well, until we sing a song that totally gets them into worship, and they just start singing out. This includes a couple people who sing very softly if they don’t know the song, very strongly if they do… and that can even change within the song. This includes the person on the praise team who has a lot on his mind, and finds it hard to concentrate and is starring off into space, then snaps back and really sings out. Then add in musicians who can experience similar issues, and the mix can get out of hand. We do our best to ride the mix, but only have so many fingers….
“What are somethings we can do about the mix? ”
Honestly the practice practice practice is the best cure. And that goes for the source (musicians and vocalist) as much as it goes for the actual mixing. The best mixes we get are often things like musicals where the rehearse (and record it) go listen, come back and do it again, re-evaluate, go and listen again and make even more adjustments. This is one huge difference between an album and a live stream. An album they have gone in tweaked, tweaked, and tweaked over and over again till they are happy with it. With a live stream you have one shot. Broadcast is definitely trickier than live because of the encoding, compression, different listening environments, etc. A lot less forgiving than live.
Another problem we face is the mix environment – the better listening / mix environment you can work the mix in, the better it is going to sound in the various sound systems it will be played back on. Currently our audio room is REALLY BAD at this. What sounds good in there can sound terrible in the computer speakers in the other room. Our audio guys typically check the sound in their monitors, in the headphones, in the halls, and at the computer – all four sound a lot different (even though they are all the same mix) and the goal is to make them all sound good – very difficult. Thing about all the different ways people will be listening – everything from mp3 headphones to home stereos, to little computer speakers – all have very different responses and different listening environments, all have to be addressed separately. [we have tried and tried to fix our mix environment, but unfortunately the biggest limiting factor is space, then background noise.]
Then there is the room acoustics in the sanctuary. All the sound bouncing around the room and being picked up by the mics tends to either make it sound airy / hollow or muddy. This is why we try to put the mics as close to the source (instrument or mouth) as possible to minimize the background noise, but our room is really bad when it comes to acoustical environment for the PA and recording. Fixing the acoustics of the room involves tuning the room so it has an even reverberation field across all frequencies (low, mid and high frequency reverberation is consistent), reduce reflections back to stage (cleans up the sound in the mics and would help the musicians and vocalist feel like they could hear themselves better), even out the hot spots / dead spots and provide an environment that is controllable and varies less between full and empty, hot and cold, humid and dry… this is a process that is going to take some time and money.
The garbage in = garbage out principle applies also. Sometimes the problem is what is coming into the system. Recently we were dealing with really bad drum sounds, trying to adjust console eq and mix, when one of the audio techs suggested the drummer try a different kit setup on the electronic drums and that fixed the problem. Maybe some of the instrumentalist need to tune again or a vocalist is just having a bad day. Then occasionally there are those who really need to find a different ministry to serve with, one that matches their God given gifts and talents because singing, playing in the band or mixing sound is not for them.
How often have you heard a live broadcast mix that sounds really good? I would say that we hear bad ones and mediocre ones much more often. Most of what we see on TV or hear on the radio (or online) have been recorded, produced, edited, perfected then broadcast (think Austin City Limits)… what other live music mixes are there out there: Think about half-time concerts at the SuperBowl (and that mix is usually pretty bad). New Years eve? Really can’t think of many other than churches.
“can we put microphones over the congregation to try to capture the congregational singing on the broadcast and recording?”
We have a pair of mics over the congregation. We mix these into the broadcast mix to provide a little more of a live feel for those listening. But sometimes we have to turn them off because they are just making the mix muddy or we have a lot of extra noise close to the mics. There is also the fundamental problem of how slow sound travels, and by the time the sound gets from the speakers / stage to where the audience mics are, it is picked up as a distinct delay. Remember microphones are just the EARS of the sound system, what ever your ears hear when they are at the microphone location, that is pretty much what the mic picks up.
Anywhere in the sanctuary is going to have sound from the PA system, room noise, etc that will become part of the mix when audience mics are used. So typically the audience mics are used to avoid dead air (say while we are waiting for someone to walk up to the pulpit and all the other mics are off), pick up audience reaction (clapping, laughter, a-cappella singing, etc). Once again, better room acoustics would help make audience mics more usable.
But I also like to remind people that there are some laws of physics we are working within, and there is only so much we can do to bend those rules (okay, not bend the rules, just work within the finer points of the rules). There are also principles of psycho-acoustics, audiology, and emotion all at play making a very convoluted, complicated web that is not always easy to decode and implement.
In pursuit of home network bliss, I have moved on to step 2.
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.
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.
