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Written by Terry Doner, December 23 2020
Setting up a church sound system from scratch? Let's talk about things you need to consider and plan.
If you are reading this, then you are likely just getting started and honestly don't really know what you are doing. Don't shy away from asking for help! Good advice is worth paying for. You might think you can't afford it; many churches who try to do this dirt cheap end up doing it three times over before getting something they are happy with. Can you afford the time and money of spending 3 times as much as you plan? If you do hire help, you still need to be an educated consumer.
One thing you need to do before you spend a penny is to define the purpose of the system. What style of music is it to serve? Is it to serve in-house and broadcast purposes? What level of staff training is to be required to operate?
Let's look at this in four major areas:
Facilities
Acoustics
Training
Audio Equipment
Facilities
Facilities
There are a few things that form the physical foundation of a good installation: location, power and wiring.
Location of your Front-of-House mix location is a hot topic. The 'best' place to mix from is in the centre of your audience. This allows your engineer to hear and feel the same as most people. This is typically not achievable as it is considered too distracting and not aesthetically pleasing. A common location is about 2/3rds of the way back and slightly off center. You want to avoid being against a wall, under a balcony, behind glass, or in a completely separate room.
Good electrical power is key to a safe, stable and quiet system. Electricity kills so please use qualified electricians to do any electrical work; it may also be required by your insurance. Your electrical design should not include the permanent use of power bars or extension cords, so install enough outlets in the right locations. Install more than you think your need. Your stage, rack and FoH outlets should not be daisy-chained together, as is common practice in a 'normal' installation. Instead all your technical circuits should be 'home run' back to the panel with isolated grounds. This is more expensive, the goal is to minimize the hums and buzzes in the system. Your front-of-house position and your stage should all be powered from the same electrical panel. To read more, see this article: Technical Power .
You will need to run wiring between three main areas: stage, Front-of-House, and amp rack. The best way of doing this is via dedicated conduits. These need to be oversized with pull boxes and pull strings, so you can easily run additional wires. You should have separate conduits for mic and line level audio, speaker level (amp output), AC power, network, DMX, and video. And plan on one empty conduit. If you can't do conduit, then cable trays or troughs can also work. You want to keep audio runs 50cm away from parallel AC runs, further is possible. AC runs should cross audio runs at right angles.
There may be a fourth area involved in your design. More common now than ever is the need for churches to broadcast their services (livestream). In these environments you may also want a broadcast room, separate from Front-of-House.
Acoustics
Acoustics
Your room is part of the audio system. If you are building a new room, hiring an acoustic consultant can save you money! You will get a better sounding room, and require less equipment and less training to operate the system.
Hard parallel walls (drywall, concrete, and block) reflect sound and can create excessive reverberation and be a cause of feedback. There are things that can be built into the design and construction that minimize these effects. You may be advised to double the thickness of drywall, or to increase the number of cross supports in the walls in order to increase acoustic rigidity.
Note: If installing drywall in areas that might also be lit with 'stage lighting', in particular raking side light. You will want to ask for a 'level 5' drywall finish.
If you are building a stage, acoustics also matter. Stages themselves are usually reverberant boxes; a proper design will minimize the negative effects of those reverberations.
Large flat areas will likely benefit from some acoustic treatment. One can create a computer model that can tell you where to install the optimal amount and type of treatment. You don't want too much or too little.
Expect the corners of your rooms to be a particular focus for acoustic treatment.
Many choose to build their own acoustic panels. This can be cost-effective, especially if you know where they are needed to minimize your effort. Please be aware of your local fire codes and ensure that the materials and construction are fire safe.
Training
Training
Good results need good training. There are lots of good resources on the internet. Good places to look are on the manufacturer's web site. Or search YouTube for your particular model of gear, especially the mixer model. There are good books to read, the Yamaha book listed at the bottom is a classic.
There are many commercial offerings as well. Here are a few:
Church Sound Boot Camp offered by Curt Taipale
MXu - offers much more than just audio training
Audio Equipment
Audio Equipment
This is often the area people want to focus on first, which is why it is covered last. One key thing about purchasing equipment is that there is a huge price range for viable solutions. For example, you might be able to buy a particular piece of gear for $100 at the cheapest, and find the 'same' thing for $10,000. There are very good reasons for such a spread in prices. The old adage "you get what you pay for" applies. If you but everything at the cheapest possible price, you will get a system that is limited in its performance and in reliability. If that is all you can afford, then so be it. Be warned that system performance will be less than the sum of its parts and you may find you need to rip it all out and start over. It takes more skill to put together a system that performs well with the cheapest components. Spend a little more and save a lot. It is said "An engineer is somebody who can solve a problem with a dollar that any fool can solve with five." - aim to be somewhere in the middle. And overall you want your investment to be generally balanced; spending a lot of money in one area might not provide best results as it is limited by under investment in another.
Leaving philosophy behind, let's move on to gear. Your audio system will have several main building blocks to it.
Inputs
Mixing
System Processing
Amplification
Speakers
These building blocks may or may not be distinct boxes in your system. Sometimes a group of functions will be packaged into one unit.
Inputs
Inputs
Inputs include: Microphones, Direct Boxes, and Media Players (eg: computers and CD players).
A quality wired microphone is a good investment and will cost about US$100. (A Shure SM58 or SM57 is a benchmark to compare against, and there are many, many reasonable alternatives).
Quality wireless microphones are much more expensive. A reasonable mid-tier wireless system will cost about $1000 each. If you can afford it, you want a "dual diversity" system; they will be much more reliable. If you are expecting to buy more than two or three for your facility, you really need to consult an expert as it gets complicated quickly and you may end up with troubles. Also, if you are in a dense urban area next to a big hotel, you may need to pay more per unit than it you are out in the country. More expensive systems are able to handle increased RF (radio frequency) competition and noise.
If you have electronic instruments, like a keyboard, bass guitar or perhaps an acoustic guitar with pickup, you will need a direct box. A good mid-tier solution would be products from Radial Engineering.
Computers are often a source in a modern sound system. Most computers have poor quality sound cards, so their built-in audio is not great. More problematic is that they are typically 1/8" stereo jacks, which are 'unbalanced' audio; you will not want to run that more than 3 meters. If you need longer than that, look for a audio interface with balanced outputs or use a direct box.
Mixing
Mixing
Audio mixers are an excellent example for the huge price range available. You can literally spend less than $100, and more than $100,000! Selecting the right system for your venue is a detailed decision. The major factors to consider are:
The maximum number of inputs provided (you should plan for some expansion)
The number of outputs supported (main FoH sound, monitors, in-ear, broadcast, etc)
Analog or Digital
Automixing capability (for hands off operation) - usually only used when one person is speaking at a time and not too many inputs.
Powered or unpowered (built in power amp or not)
The level of expertise / training expected.
A good place to start would be the Behringer X32. It is a very popular choice in church systems. For a larger list of mixers, see this list.
If your system needs to support a livestream/broadcast capability, read this: Why you need an independent audio mix
System Processing
System Processing
In simplest of systems, the system processing function is built in to other devices, eg a line-level balanced feed to a powered speaker.
Many modern digital mixing consoles can provide the processing functions and do not require a separate box.
System designers often wish to have system level calibration and tuning managed by a device separate from the mixing console. This allows system integrity to be maintained even if a different console is selected.
These devices are often called called DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) or Speaker Management Systems. These devices can provide house EQ separate from the mixer, cross-over, delays and more advanced distribution capabilities (lobby, nursery, etc).
Examples:
Amplification
Amplification
Amplifiers transform a low-level audio signal into a high powered signal that can drive a house speaker, monitor speaker, or a speaker in a remote room (eg lobby).
Sometimes the amplifier can be built into the speaker or into the mixer. Higher powered amplifiers tend to be separate devices.
The size of the amplifier is determined by the size of the room you are trying to fill and the particular speakers you are powering.
Brands include: Crown, Crest, Ashley, Yamaha, Mackie, etc.
Speakers
Speakers
Like so many other choices, there are many. Speakers are precision instruments that have different characteristics intended for specific usages. These characteristics include:
Coverage pattern
Frequency response
Power capability
Efficiency
And whether or not they are intended to be suspended.
This last point is very important. Please don't suspend a speaker that wasn't designed to by hung. And also please have a qualified rigger design and install anything the hangs. Speakers are usually large and heavy- they can kill somebody.
It is very common to mount speakers on floor stands on either side of a stage. Although common and convenient, this is not typically best. It is hard to provide proper stereo to a group of people. It is not a good design to have the source of the sound to come from a different location than the visual focus; this creates fatigue. Our ears are very well designed to distinguish sound coming from the left versus right. Because of the typical coverage pattern, these solutions tend to be very loud at the front and not so at the rear.
Where possible, you typically want to get speakers up high and central; pointed down into the audience area. This makes for a sound that appears to becoming from the centre. And more evenly balanced front-to-back.
Speakers and amplifiers selection are interrelated decisions. They selection of each depends on the specification of the other.
Further Reading
Further Reading
The Worship Ministry Toolkit by Churchfront - An extensive listing of equipment in many different categories.
Guide to Sound Systems for Worship (Yamaha). There is a more general version of the book as well.
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