While I’ve done a handful of ‘real’ events the bulk of my experience in live sound is in churches, and as much as I hate to admit it, churches are often home to really bad ‘sound’ and I am often asked to give advice or train church sound guys. I could make the argument that the bad sound that these churches experience is because they are often on a tight budget, have ammature musicians on stage and volunteers behind the sound desk but, instead I’m going to tackle this from another angle completely. Before you even get to the skill of the band or the ear of the engineer etc, there are 3 things to consider about the room and the sound system itself (you can apply most of this to any live music event). If you are having issues with sound at your church you have to think about these things before you rush to blame the guy on sound!

Ambience  |  Coverage  |  Intelligibility

Ambiance (say this with a french accent)

Now for any engineers reading this… I’m referring to the mood or ‘atmosphere’ that is desired in the service as opposed to reverb time although they are related!

Some churches want an immersive experience, dim house lights, bright stage lights… while some want a more community feel, bright house lights, no stage.

Whichever approach a church takes, the point is that a venue and it’s sound system should serve the vision of the church and not be what dictates the atmosphere.

When it comes to the ambiance this is primarily determined by the room acoustics. A very ‘echoey’ room can be helped, but not completely fixed by choosing the right PA. The layout of the room, where the band (read: drums and guitar amps!) are positioned, what type of loudspeakers are used and where they are pointed are all very important. However, if you walk into a venue and can barely hear what the person next to you is saying because of the din of noise just from people talking to each other, there is a lot to work on before fixing what is going through the PA!

Churches meeting in school halls tend to have only minor challenges when it comes to room acoustics, it’s the churches that are meeting in converted offices with low ceilings or warehouses with hard concrete floors and large flat walls.

Providing an answer to your acoustic problem is outside of the scope of this article, but if you look through the listings here on SoundDex you’ll find someone who can help you!

Coverage

In an ideal world… or in my perfect venue, every ‘seat’ in the room would have the same ‘experience’ of a service. Of course this may not be what you want for music in church, but it certainly is what you want for the sermon.

Sometimes having ‘cold’ zones for music is helpful for people sensitive to high volume. Not that the hot zones would be excessive but that the cold zones would be slightly quieter.

Nevertheless the goal is that the tone and volume level of the sound system is reasonably consistent throughout the venue.

Coverage is determined by the PA itself and where it is positioned but also again it can significantly influenced by the room acoustics, especially in the low end.

Check out these plots of volume for 2 PA systems in different positions in the same room:

Two speakers mounted in the corners:

One single speaker mounted in the center:

If you are setting up a new venue, choosing the right PA is crucial to obtaining even coverage and ensuring that each person can hear properly!

If you haven’t got the room acoustics right, the room is going to hinder your ability to achieve even and consistent coverage… and If you have the privilege of designing the room before it is built, you have the opportunity now to avoid the pitfalls of bad room acoustics!

Allow me to chase a rabbit briefly here! The positioning of the sound desk, or sound guy might not have a huge impact on coverage, but it’s a really bad idea to put the sound guy in a place where the coverage is really bad! I often see sound guys at churches pushed into a corner, on a balcony or even worse… in a booth at the back. If the sound guy can’t hear what everyone else is hearing, they can’t mix for everyone else! Please consider moving your sound guy into an area where they can clearly see the stage, and clearly hear what everyone else hears in the room!

Ok rabbit caught, let’s move on to the final issue to consider:

Intelligibility

Some like to put it that the goal for a PA system reproducing any kind of spoken word is that at least 8 out of 10 words are heard perfectly and understood. I would imagine that in a church, people missing 20% of what the preacher says could be a significant problem!

In a church venue, intelligibility should be very high on the priority list as spoken word is often the majority of a service.

Intelligibility again is influenced by the choice and positioning of the PA. Sitting on one of those blue zones in the images above would certainly result in you failing to hear what is being said! However, I want to once again make the case for the impact of room acoustics on the clarity of a PA. Rooms with a lot of hard surfaces and very little soft material to absorb sound will allow sound to continue to bounce around for a long time before it dies out. This time is often measured by calculating how long a sound takes to reach 60dB lower than when it started.. or Reverb Time 60 (RT60).

Roughly predicted the RT60 for the room in the plots above is at worst is 3-4 seconds, at best, with people in it, maybe around 2s but with social distancing for covid… good luck hoping that people will fix the problem!

In terms of intelligibility for music listening It’s recommended to have a maximum RT60 of around 1.2s and for speech/dialog this should be around 0.6s, so a room like the above would definitely benefit from having some acoustic panels to absorb some of the sound and get the reverb time down.

Hopefully by now I have made my case for prioritizing the room acoustics in your venue!

Time and time again I’ve watched people setup in a room, crank everything up and blame the sound guy, the PA or the band for what is actually an acoustics problem that cannot actually be overcome by a better mix, a better speaker or a better band.

Sure, a good engineer will tweak a mix to compensate for problems in a room, the right speaker array will provide better coverage and reduce interaction with the room and a great band are going to be entertaining even if sound is bad but at the root, at the core of the problem is a room made of brick, mortar and steel… not very flexible, not very easy to negotiate with…

If you have the luxury of designing a venue before it is built, no matter what the size, then remember this, walls are hard to move so make sure you put them in the right place.

Don’t blame the sound guy!

About The Author:

Jaime has been fiddling with gadgets all his life but found his passion for sound when he joined the sound team at his church. He has spent the last 23 years carrying speakers and mixing sound almost every Sunday. He now consults for various churches on everything media and tech related.