Church Audio Blog

(The Real) Three Way Mic Shootout

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:11:00 +0000

So, as promised I have the three way shootout of the three way shootout between the Sennheiser HSP 4, Countryman E6 and I threw a wireless SM58 in there because it's a microphone that all of us audio guys are familiar with in it's frequency response. I apologize for the less than perfect video quality Part of the reason is that I'm not that great at finding the right settings for video file compression to get it look good while still keeping a smaller file size. Though it sounds like there's some slight high frequency detail lost, this is the typical setup for our video encoding to web for our Sunday morning services. I highly recommend using headphones for this as the differences are not noticeable on computer and laptop speakers.

My one caveat to this that slightly corrupts this test is that I forgot to bypass the compressor that hits our video inputs so, yes the sound of the mics is not entirely natural, but our typical compression is only about 2dB to 5dB of gain reduction when our pastor starts to get excited and really project so it's not that heavy on this video. My own personal opinion is that the E6 over accentuates the nasally tones in my voice's upper-midrange detail. Sort of 1kHz to 3kHz area. And there's not much natural fundamental frequencies in below 300Hz on this mic that sound good. My voice is slightly nasally to begin with but this mic leans me more to sounding like Gilbert Gottfried. You know, the guys who voices the Aflac duck? No offense Gil.

The Sennheiser HSP 4 sounds very natual. There are fundamental frequencies that add body. I was expecting a lot of low frequencies from this mic being that it has a cardioid pickup pattern and would accentuate proximity effect, but it didn't. The nasally quality is not there as well. The sound is more neutral, and I like how the high frequencies sound on this mic. In the room on Sunday morning I loved how clean the mic sounded. Rather than Pastor Josh sounding slightly synthetic and that he is wearing a mic, he sounded like he normally does when we just have a conversation which was a huge win.

Is this a Microdot connector??

The SM58, with it's big dynamic capsule sounds really in your face and intimate, lots of low mids. But given that I planted the microphone on my chin and spoke directly into the capsule, it would sound that way.

Working with the mic on Sunday morning I loved the sound of the mic first service with the EQ bypassed, but one of my volunteers Chris, a former recording engineer felt the desire to tweak the EQ to make it sound better. Looking over the settings on the console between the E6 settings and the Sennheiser settings we did about half the work of getting it to sound right as we would on the E6.

The EQ settings for the E6 channel has a 100Hz high pass filter and then the EQ is set as HF Shelf: -9dB at 20kHz, HMF: -9dB at 700Hz, Q= 1.4, LMF: -12dB at 220Hz, LF Shelf: -2dB at 160Hz. Crazy EQ setting yeah!? My thought too. There's gotta be something I'm doing wrong. The E6 has several capsule filters that change the frequency response of the capsule. I have the neutral filter on the capsule and even still the HF shelf at 20kHz is there because even with the natural capsule that doesn't boost high frequencies we have issues of feedback above 12kHz. And those are feedback frequencies that are very painful. The two mid band EQ's are what I'm shocked by. Why do I need that much EQ to make it sound good or neutralize feedback frequencies?

UPDATE: what I forgot to mention is that getting this mic to test for a few days meant that I got to torture test it with a few voluneers. So I put it on and cranked it as loud as I possibly could. I figure the house level was around 75-80dB. And then only when I went into the house standing in front of the PA and talking (and annoying the band members who were arriving to set up for rehearsal) did I hear the slightest beginnings of feedback. But that was standing in front of the PA!! END UPDATE.

I'm trying to arrange for a demo of the DPA 4067. For you DPA users I was told that the connector pictured above is the MicroDot connector, I have never seen one, is it? Still no word on when the DPA demo will happen but I'll keep the posts coming on what is going on. Stay tuned!

Three Way Mic Shootout

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:24:00 +0000

I set up a three way demo of the microphones between the Sennheiser HSP 4, the Countryman E6, and a wireless SM58 beta. One of the mics gets jealous. Watch the video to find out what happens.

Headroom, Feedback, & the Keebler Elves Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:35:00 +0000

The quest for better sound for our pastor has me landed on two product demos. The first one is the Sennheiser HSP2. However the HSP2 wasn't available for demo, but I got the HSP4, which is the cardioid version. The reason I chose this is that it uses the MKE Platinum capsule, and we have an MKE clip on lavalier microphone that we used to use and it sound very good. Then we moved to the E6.

There are several benefits of a headworn mic over a shirt lavalier. As the pastor looks down to read his notes or a Bible passage, the lavalier will pick up a more direct detailed sound because he is speaking right into the mic. Then he looks up and it sounds different. If he moves his head too much to the left or the right wearing a lavalier, the sound is also likely to change. And not just in tonality but in volume as well. So the inconsistency is not good. I don't have a great video setup, it's called an iPhone and iMovie. But I wanted to show you guys some things about this mic that you wouldn't naturally see if you saw this online.

The one thing I mention in the video that I'm still not sure is accurate (please correct me if I'm wrong) but the Sennheiser Rep told me the detachable cable uses the Microdot Connector. However looking online I think the connectors look slightly different. This one presses into place, and the DPA Microdot looks like it may be a threaded connector. Are they the same?

Sennheiser HSP 4 Preview from Jeremy Blasongame on Vimeo.

For me wearing the microphone, I find that I tend to shoot "D" and "K" sound out the side of my mouth. But a combination of moving the microphone back a centimeter or two and the low frequency roll off helps out. In the video I mention that the sound quality is much better on the Sennheiser. In fact, what I did was neutralize the entire EQ section and the only thing that was active in my tests was a 80Hz roll off to keep low frequency plosives out of the subwoofers. After walking the room I added 3dB at 1kHz. The difference between that and the E6 is huge. My high-mid band on the Pastor EQ is set to -9dB at 700Hz and the low-mid band is set to -12dB at 200Hz. A huge difference. And I was able to crank it before I started to hear feedback.

In the past I didn't think to consider a cardioid microphone but I'm actually giving this one serious thought because it sounds so natural. I have the mic until next Monday so I'm going to have my pastor wear it for this Sunday and then post short video snippits of A/B differences between last week's sermon of him wearing the E6 and a sermon of him wearing the HSP4. Obviously I'd go with the beige version of the mic which adds the -3 designation to the product code (so ordering it would be the HSP 2-3 or the HSP 4-3). I think the biggest difference from the two microphones is that the HSP 4's capsule is more visually obvious. It is 8.4mm wide, which is actually quite big. the HSP 2's capsule is almost half the size. But without having the HSP 2 available for a direct comparison, that is the only thing I can comment on.

Again, thanks to Sennheiser for helping arrange this demo. I hope this is a great test, and I'll get back to you guys with info on how the test went.

Headroom, Feedback, & the Keebler Elves

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:55:00 +0000

The last time I blogged it was 2011. Christmas is a big reason for it. Getting engaged was another.

One of the solutions I have been looking for is something that would help suppress feedback on our pastor's microphone. He loves to engage with the audience and so he stands on the edge of the stage. We're always wondering when he's actually going to fall off. ~~And catch it on camera. To post to YouTube. And then re-tweet~~.

Exactly fifteen feet above his head is the PA and when he turns his head in just the right angle you will hear the beginning whispers and groans of feedback. He's wearing the Countryman E6. And I'm not a big fan of the sound quality from it. But it's not at one frequency I could attenuate slightly. It varies with his position and where he's at. There's some feedback above 12kHz, some at 800Hz, some at 270Hz and some at 150Hz. Bottom line it's too much to start hacking away with notch filters and make him sound unnatural. To counter this problem I've simply turned his mic down a few dB. The only problem with that is his volume isn't where I'd like it to be. If you're sitting in the back of the room or with me in the tech booth it's parked around normal conversation volume, about 60-65dB-A.

I'd like to get that number 5dB higher at the back of the room so that's had me looking at different ideas which brings me to the subject matter today the Rupert Neve 5045 Primary Source Enhancer. I watched a demo provided by the Yamaha rep at a local dealer. He brought a microphone, a speaker and inserted the 5045 to a channel on a console and he started with all the knobs at twelve o-clock and hit the insert button. Instantly the feedback was gone. This made one of my eyebrows raise up. The Yamaha rep raised the volume a few dB higher and fiddled with the knobs and the feedback started to go away again. I was stunned, and my other eyebrow followed the first. And thankfully I was able to take it with me to try for the weekend. I did all sorts of things to test it out.

Just for kicks I tried to figure out what is going on under the hood. The rep I talked to at the demo compared it to a "soft gate." A soft expander would be more accurate I think. Later when I got to test it and try to figure out how it worked I tried it on some CD music and yes it is sort of a soft expander. There are three knobs on the device, including a blue illuminated Engage/Bypass switch. First is the big red knob that selects the different time constants for the attack and release. There is also a RMS/PEAK switch that changes the time constants. For our pastor I liked the sound of the RMS. The middle knob is a variable threshold. A LED next to the knob helps gauge the threshold so that you are not processing too much and chopping away at the pastor. The third knob is sort of the depth knob it's range is from zero to twenty and the rep boasted that if you set it up just right you can get almost 16-20dB headroom. I only squeezed about 7dB more headroom from the mic, which is great. One also has to consider the speaker system, the mic you're using, and other factors to how well it will perform.

My boss was in the auditorium while I was trying to make microphones feed back and when I pressed the button to engage the process and all the feedback went away it was magical. She even said "wow."
Sunday morning was great. I loved hearing our pastor a bit more from the system and there is some magic to the Rupert Neve name, the device with the processing bypassed just sounds good.

My Verdict: It has the magic as the Keebler Elves yes, but there are a few things I don't like about it. First is the price. It's around $1600. Yes there is two channels so it's only $800 per channel but that still on the edge for me in price. For that price I could buy a much better head-worn microphone for our pastor. I'm looking at trying the DPA 4066, and the Sennheiser HSP 2, not as well known as the DPA but features the MKE platinum capsule, which sounds awesome.

I know it may sound like I'm nit picking on price but I really do love this piece of equipment. Special thanks to Yamaha for loaning the equipement and to Apex Audio for helping arrange the demo!!

Great Drum Tones: The Cymbals

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:46:00 +0000

Continuing my series on getting drum tones I want to talk about cymbals today. Many live sound engineers will not understand this problem, with the exception of working in small clubs or in churches where the stage volume of musicians can be an issue.

Of the progenitors of stage noisiness, the drums are king. In many churches its such an issue that drum isolation booths from companies like Clearsonic or Perdue Acoustics have become the staple item. I know of some churches that build a complete “drum condo.” It’s a fully enclosed room on the stage, with a door and you can stand outside the room and carry on a normal conversation without having to raise voices while the drummer is pretending he’s John Bonham. It wouldn’t surprise me to find a Christmas wreath hung on the door of the drum condo this time of year.

Thing is, though, drum booths and drum condos and even just drum shields are little more than a necessary evil, they are visually intrusive, and the added reflections impact the sound of the drums. With some drummers using a shield I notice that I have cymbal bleed coming into tom mics, and even the kick. So then I spend more time as a butcher than a mixer, hacking and slicing away with the EQ trying to minimize the cymbal bleed while giving clarity to the drum microphones.

A while back I found a YouTube video of the Zildjian Gen16 cymbals and showed itto one of my drummers. He was very skeptical but willing to try it. We’ve been searching for a better solution for drum stage volume issues and I came across a video of the Zildjian Gen16 cymbals. On paper, and YouTube, they looked good. But the compressed low quality sound of the video meant that if we wanted to see how good they really are, we needed to try them out. So we bought them with a 45-day money back guarantee knowing that if we hated them we only had to pay for shipping them back.

Let me be very clear: THESE ARE NOT DIGITAL CYMBALS. I can shout into the microphone capsules under the cymbals and have them amplify my voice into the PA. They are still cymbals, but about eighty percent quieter.

The way they work is that they have a capsule under the cymbal that has two microphones inside that amplify the cymbal. There is a small breakout cable that runs to the cymbal capsule. The cable connects to to the DCP (Digital Cymbal Processor) that has preset EQ curves much like an acoustic guitar that has a preamp and tone shaping capability built into it. So you dial in a preset EQ that you like and get playing, and the presets are made to sound like other cymbals. There are twenty presets for each cymbal available. This means that you can make the cymbals sound really bright and sparkly, or really dark if you want and everything in between. So one preset will be a sound much like a K series cymbal, and another like an A- series, or a Z-custom.

The 480ae kit we bought came with the DCP, the cabling, 14” hi hats, an 18” crash cymbal and a 20” ride. Zildjian also has a complete lineup of different size crashes, rides, splash cymbals and china’s for drummers to complete their drum kit how they want it. And for some of you crazy drummers who like to use small crash cymbals on your hi-hat, go for it. It will work. The key to these is spending a bit of time finding the right tones out of the cymbals you like. In the same way that you go to a music store and take a pair of drumsticks trying different cymbals out to find one that matches the tone you are going for you need to sit with a good pair of headphones or in-ears and just find out which tone presets work for you.

When they arrived in the mail I called one of my drummers and he came over to play for an hour or so to get tones out of the cymbals and try the drums without the shield. Probably the coolest thing in trying these cymbals has been that because it’s so much quieter, I don’t need the drum shield. The musicians are asking for much less kick and snare in their monitors and I was able to neutralize some of the radical EQ work I did on the toms to kill the cymbal bleed with the drum shield. The result is that the kick, snare and toms sound much more natural, and both of us were very happy with the results, him as a tone-picky drummer, and me as a CDO (that’s OCD in alphabetical order) FOH engineer. The image above shows how much cleaner our stage looks for Christmas without the drum shield.

My Verdict: It’s not a product for everyone. For the absolute purists who love the sound of real cymbals this will be something of an abomination. You do need to spend a bit of time finding the tones you like. The first week we tried it we weren’t as satisfied as the next week. But for many, including me, this is an amazing solution. The kit we bought runs about $1000 street price, which is very reasonable, and add-on cymbals are less than the price of a K-series crash cymbal. Yes you have to deal with a bit of bleed from the snare and toms, but it’s manageable. And remember they’re not digital cymbals playing back a recorded sample, they are real cymbals. I have been able to get away with taking down the drum shield, which leaves our stage looking clean, and makes the communication with the drummer much easier. As a result the stage volume is lower and I don’t think we’ve had any volume complaints centered around the stage volume of the drums in a few weeks, which is a huge win! In fact, we’re planning on purchasing another Gen16 crash soon.

If you're local to the Southern California area and are looking to purchase these send me an email through my profile or DM me on Twitter. We can try set up a time you can come over and play them. Oh, and you will have to bring your own drummer, because I can't play.

Great Drum Tones Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:23:00 +0000

I'm starting a series of posts on drum tones. Being a bass player turned sound guy, I'm quite picky about drums and bass in my mix. So in the following series of posts I'll talk about microphone placement and choice on the drums followed by mixing techniques.

The first thing to remember is that the drums as a whole are an instrument. Yes the snare is one of those instruments but I have never heard a song that only used a snare as a percussive instrument. Usually it's several elements making up a drum kit. With that in mind it can be challenging to get a good close mic sound from individual instruments within the drum kit. I've found that 80% of the sound that comes from the drums is the drum itself. Wood drums sound different than metal drums as well. Wood drums are typically Maple multi-ply wood, while metal cymbals are either brass or steel. For my preferences I tend to prefer wood snares over metal snares. Metal snares, especially brass, have a distinct resonance or "ping" sound to it that I find is often dissonant to the key of the song and I waste of band of EQ to try and neutralize that resonance. With wood snares I find the overall tone may be a bit darker but there is a cleaner pop sound. There is a lot about the snare sound that is out of the hands of the audio guy. Some drummers like single ply heads, while others prefer multi-ply heads. Some don't realize that this choice will effect tone. But lets assume that the drum has a head that is in new or good condition and everything is tuned properly. Not that I'm slamming drummers but most of the drummers I have met don't know how to tune their drums properly and it just creates more work for me hacking and slicing at the drum tones when I go to EQ. Then I've worked with other drummers who bring in great well-tuned drums and have very little work to do because they already sound great.

The other twenty percent of drum sounds obviously comes from what you and I do with the microphone and all those knobs on the console. Starting with the microphone it's very common to use an SM57. I use the SM57 beta because I got tired of drummers popping the plastic head off the standard 57. I'll place the microphone about a fingers width above the rim like the image pictured here aiming where the stick makes contact with the head of the drum. For this drummer it happens that it was the center third of the drum. For most guys this is great. I like to use a second mic underneath the snare to get the sound of the beads of the snare and layer that in with the top snare mic.

Typically for a snare bottom microphone I will place it about two inches away from the bottom of the snare facing up towards the snare beads. If you're using a bottom snare mic you will need to check the phase between the top and bottom mics. Sometimes if you're using a 57 on top and a condensor on the bottom you'll be OK, but more often than not there is some phase cancellation between the two mics. I personally like the SM87 as the snare bottom mic. It's a cheap alternative to the AKG 451 that I loved to use as a snare bottom mic in the studio. In live sound close mic'ing the drums gives a lot of clarity and up-front emphasis to an instrument especially with bleed from other instruments like guitar amps or bass rigs.

Next time we'll talk about the kick drum and hi-hat. Happy mixing!

A Better Way To Recruit Volunteers

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:10:00 +0000

The problem with being in tech at a church is that you are IN tech. The nature of our work means that we aren't afforded the time to go socialize with prospective volunteers to recruit them. At least, I don’t have that kind of time. And I’m not the sort of person who can easily walk up to someone who looks new and say, “what would it take for you start volunteering in the Sunday morning production?" Bulletin announcements never work, announcements from the pastor generates willing bodies, but few actually have the skills or what it takes to be effective. Which leaves you scraping, begging and endlessly bribing people to help you in tech. After a few months of that I said to myself, there's got to be a better way!

So, a few months after I came on staff I sat down with my supervisor and the pastor and talked about the need for systematizing volunteer recruitment. After all, tech isn’t the only area that needs volunteers. It seems there is a continual need for people assisting guests in the parking lot, children’s ministry, ushers, greeters… you get the idea. The bigger problem is that when we only tap people our relational networks on the shoulder to help us, we over extend people who are currently serving in sometimes two or three areas. And we miss out on empowering new people who walk in the doors of the church looking to get involved and contribute.

So my supervisor and the lead pastor created a half sheet questionnaire that is used in our quarterly “Discover Sunridge” class. It’s a class where we explain why we exist as a church and unpack our vision and values. We explain that we don’t have formal membership, but that if people want to really feel like Sunridge is their home church they should find relationships and a role. Relationships come through our small group structure where people do life together and share time in the bible and in prayer caring for each other. Roles come in the form of volunteering. We want people to contribute in some way, not just lurk on the fringes. The half-sheet questionnaire asks whether they’re a people person or not, when they are available to serve, and what skills and passions they have.

For example, you need to be super outgoing and a great people-person to be a greeter or to assist guests find their way around the building and use our child check-in system. Tech people need to have lots of patience, a cool head under pressure and a team-player mentality. Those are two completely different kinds of people we’re looking for, but both are very valuable and necessary for the church.

The sheets are reviewed for the best ministry fit based upon gifting and time available, then they are placed in the appropriate staff member’s box and we are told to make contact with that person within a week to talk about volunteering. We arrange to sit down with the perspective volunteer (a great excuse to grab Starbucks) and vision-cast why we do what we do and ask them questions that really assess whether this person is right for this ministry. If they seem to have the right skills or the right attitude and willingness to learn, the training begins. If not, we try and help them find a ministry (and ministry leader) that is a better fit for them.

Alexis, Bryce, Jacob, Jamon Jay, Joe, Jolene, Mike, Paul, and Robert. I guess I attract all the ‘J’ names. Over the past ten months these are the ten people who have come from that recruitment system into not just audio, but cameras, video direction, lighting, and ProPresenter. In all fairness, one has decided that tech is not for them and is serving elsewhere, but that still means that nine out of ten volunteers is 90% effective at finding the right people to work in tech. Right now I can’t take on any more audio guys. Not even if they used to work in a recording studio and have mad mixing skills. I think I may have too many audio volunteers as it is. Some of my guys aren’t getting enough time on the board for consistency. I still need one more person in lighting and one or two more cameramen but the next Discover class is in a few weeks, and I’m praying God will provide for those needs, especially as we are growing in our Sunday morning production. Right now, if I'm just technically directing and not mixing, it takes ten people to make a Sunday morning service happen.

The Discover your role card is almost overly simplistic, but we want to keep it short and simple. Besides, ministry leaders are the best people to assess whether a person can be effective at serving in their area. Tech Directors who struggle to find the time to recruit volunteers should forward this post to their pastor or supervisor. And if you’re a pastor who got this post emailed to your inbox, it’s a win-win situation that has helped us with volunteer recruitment in every area of the church. And I'd be willing to talk more in depth about how you can use our system for the benefit of your church, you can find my email on my profile page.

The Lime Green Sharpie

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:50:00 +0000

It's that time of year again, time to clean the tech booth. Every year I need to go through the drawers, cubbies, and all the little dark corners and do reorganizing and labeling. And as usual I find some pretty interesting things that have been there for a long time. You do clean the tech booth regularly, don't you?

The coolest thing I found was a lime green sharpie! I've never seen one, and being that I buy the supplies for tech world I have no idea where it came from. The most uncool thing I found was Celine Dion's "My Love" album. I'm curious to know what random things other people have found in the tech booth?

Some of the things I did was some file management on our ProPresenter computer. I hooked up an Epson printer that sits next to Front of House so that we can print the Planning Center service flow plan and the input list from there and not need to go to the offices to make copies. That link is my weekly input list. You can check this file on Dropbox every Thursday afternoon to see what we're doing. I also used our little labeling machine to make labels to put on drawers to make it easier for volunteers to find things they need like, lighting gels, VGA cables, adaptors, batteries, sharpies. It's amazing how much junk you accumulate in a year. Random pens that don't work anymore, service bulletins in random drawers. I really believe that we need to create a great work environment for volunteers to work in, that includes things being neatly organized, easy to find as well as laid out in a way that makes doing their job strait-forward. I was going to say easy, except that if you've done this for any length of time you know that church tech is rarely easy.

The Long Tail

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:38:00 +0000

There are different ways to create space in a mix. You can do it by panning sources from the center to one side to the other to create space. Other times the sounds themselves are in conflict and it's better to reach for the EQ. This week I had a great example where I had two distorted electric guitars that both had the Marshall bite sound to them. Panning them around in different speakers helped a bit but in the end I had to pull the high frequencies off one of them to help it sit better in the mix. Another more artistic way of creating space in your mix is to create a dimensional cue by adding reverberations or delays. Reverbs can add the sense of closeness or distance and space depending on how you set up your reverb units.

The effects units I have to work with on a regular basis is a TC Electronic M-One, a TC Electronics D-Two (delay), a Lexicon PCM 80 and a Yamaha SPX90. Each unit has it's respective strengths and weaknesses. When I was working in the studio I had hours to page through every reverb patch preset and adjust the reverb parameters to be just perfect for the track and the instrument that I was applying reverb to. In live sound however you don't have the pleasure or luxury of time. So what I do is I have 3 reverbs that all sound completely different and are preset for general needs. Mind you, If I had more reverb units I'd have more flexibility but sometimes too many choices can also be paralyzing. I find that sometimes when I limit my creative tools I am actually a little more creative. I have set one reverb to a somewhat short decay time around 500ms and it's a very dark sounding reverb that I use to add fullness in midrange information. The second reverb unit I have is set with about 1 second of decay time again and accentuates frequencies between 1kHz and 4kHz to bring out the character of vocals or the snare or sometimes an acoustic guitar. Reverb 3 is set to a patch with a 3 second decay and is insanely bright. I use this occasionally on snare, but mostly to generate the breathy vocal sound.
It's too difficult many times to get the right kick drum sound with just one microphone, channel strip, EQ and compressor, right? That's why so many people typically use a "kick in" and "kick out" mic on separate channels so that they can get the tight beater sound from one mic and the big thump from another mic each that are positioned and tailored to capture that sound. I use several different effects units the same way to get the right sound I want. By adding varying amounts of short reverb, long reverb and bright reverb to each instrument I'm effectively customizing a reverb tail that works for that instrument in the mix. In some senses it's like I have created a reverb unit for each instrument. It's too hard to find a great reverb patch that works well on a lot of things. And when you do, typically it's only for one specific piece of music. I'll find something that works well on female vocals but doesn't flatter the male vocals or acoustic guitar or work as a drum reverb.Two tracks I can't stop listening to lately that I think have amazing reverb on are Sting's Fields of Gold and Fragile.

I'd like to know how you typically use reverbs in your mix to create space or what songs you like that have great use of reverb.

Tech Arts Spiritual Warfare

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:43:00 +0000

I was working on a good post about how to use reverb units effectively for live sound and then this morning hit. Sometimes there are some circumstances that simply can’t be easily explained away as user error or volunteers not paying attention. My disclaimer for today is that I need to talk as a Technical Director more than an audio geek. But if you serve or work tech in a church you should be able to follow this post pretty well.

Spritiual warfare isn’t something too many churches talk about. It’s certainly something that we don’t talk about very often at Sunridge. But not talking about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I can remember a Sunday morning similar to this about two years ago where it seemed that every tech department had huge issues crop up out of nowhere.

My morning started with turning everything on and us going through our pre-service rehearsal from 7:00 to 8:15 and during that time we noticed that the brightness and color of what is coming from our video projectors is really off. I put our video test card up on the screens to judge the overall picture and it looked like someone cranked the contrast and the yellow on the picture. So with 40 minutes to our service start I grabbed my tool kit and our spare projector lamps and replaced them. The lamps aren’t hot-swappable so I had to disconnect the power and video input just to turn them around to access the lamp door. Mind you, the band is still rehearsing, and because I’m mixing Front of House, I should be making small changes and walking the room to hear what the audience will during worship.

The lamp swap made a difference in the color contrast. I think it was time to change the bulbs But the cameras were outputting a lot of yellow as well and a little color balancing helped but overall it was nasty. So during the preaching time we adjusted the chrominance value on our video mixer’s Color Effects Engine to offset the fact that our pastor looked as though he had a deep yellow skin. But that was just the beginning; by the end of first service I learned that the audio CD for our sermon podcast somehow didn’t record. And our video recording of the message was a big corrupt file. In English, we had nothing! The half hour between services I was eager to find out why the output to the projectors was so yellow, I checked to see if all the BNC connectors video distro amp were connected properly, I had been working there earlier in the week, though it all worked on Thursday night at rehearsal. As I was checking the connectors the video feed for the hallway and to the projection screens suddenly dies. My video director and I spend the next fifteen minutes narrowing down the problem to our RGBHV video distribution amplifier. Apparently it’s dead.

At this point, a few of the volunteers are watching and praying. At five minutes late, we have to start the service, I make the call that we’ll run without projectors, I give our worship leader the cue and we start worship without anything from the cameras or ProPresenter lyrics for the congregation. During the second song of worship our lighting director readies for the next cue (all preprogrammed on Thursday) and when he takes to the next look all the lights come up to 100% in the house and on the stage. There is a few moments of scrambling as he has to reprogram the scene and apply the changes to subsequent scenes. This isn’t a lightning fast operation on an ETC Express, so it’s a really awkward 40 seconds for everyone in the room during worship. Thankfully my video director knows when not to listen to me and decided to continue working on the problem he made a few mad dashes to the electrical room and found a way to route signal to the projectors and during the last few bars of worship I see the projectors fire up with the big white SONY logo in the middle. After the projector’s Sony commercial warm-up cycle I see gloriousness of what was working first service.

Now, lighting cue fail, podcast CD fail, video capture fail, projector bulbs, video distribution amplifier fail. If any one of those had happened on a normal Sunday morning we’d have worked the problem but in a perfect storm situation like this there’s no way this is just coincidence. During the sermon our pastor talked about how God has been blessing us and the church has been growing. An astonishing 111 new families have come in the past six weeks. Do you think that makes us a target for spiritual warfare? Oh yeah.

For any pastors reading this, yes a lot of times we made a simple mistakes in tech world. I think the tendency that many churches and church leaders fall into is the idea that when something goes wrong it’s always the result of “user error.” I mean, it worked last week so it should work this week, right? It’s true that nine times out of ten it is user error. I too make mistakes; I’m human after all. But let’s not forget that Satan’s job is to distract, destroy, and discourage. I’ll be honest, I experienced all three of those this morning. I was distracted from being able to give my full attention to mixing FOH, I was very discouraged because I have a huge value on excellence and hate visible fails from tech world. It also discourages my volunteers from feeling like they can do a good job. And with a broken video distro, I have to fork out $300-$400 this week, so it was a tough Sunday. But we don't give up.

Church Tech Budgeting

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:22:00 +0000

I was sitting in a church all-staff lunch, much like we do every Tuesday afternoon. This really is a time to get to catch up with other people on staff we normally don’t see or interface with on a normal basis. A brief discussion on the upcoming 2012 budget proposal deadline came up and one of the people sitting on a couch spoke up rather cheerfully to the finance guy, “oh, I could give you my budget now: $0. Or do you want me to email that to you?” There were a few giggles around the room and the conversation settled back into personal matters. Yes, tis the season (at least for our church) to look back on last year’s goals and budget numbers and play the weatherman to forecast the next year.

Here’s where things get tricky. I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in that our church has never had a Tech Director, I’m their first. Nine years since we moved into our permanent facility and spent around $650,000 to convert a big concrete box into a state of the art production facility. The assumption of the leadership at the time was that because they bought almost every thing new they were naive to think that they didn’t need to put aside money to regularly maintain it. Which makes me wonder if they ever rotated their tires or flushed their radiator fluid. You do that, don’t you?

And then things started to break or just need servicing from years of wear and tear usage. This leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. I come to equipment with smiley faces drawn on the accrued dust to try and to be something between MacGyver and Mr. Scott from Star Trek, but there are some things that can’t be fixed with a soldering iron or duct tape. I know that money is still tight so I couldn’t ask for what the reality of what it takes to run this tech ministry would be. We simply don’t have the money. Corporate America isn’t the only one who has been hit by this recession. Churches have been hit even worse in some senses. Our cash flow comes from people’s giving. So what happens when people lose their job or are forced to take a pay cut rather than losing their job? Those people have less money (some have no money) to support their local church.

This meant that last year 90% of my operations budget went to just fixing things that broke. Mind you, it’s not that we have bad equipment. It’s just old, and was designed in a time when we had needs A, B, & C. And it met those needs very well. Nearly ten years on, we’re in a place where we have needs D, E, & F and we need to think about not only meeting those needs but trying to build a system that is flexible to meet future needs.

In some ways church tech budgeting is very frustrating. Most churches don’t have a tech budget, or even a tech person. It gets lumped into a generalized “worship music budget” that the worship leader or pastor oversees. Most churches view AV equipment as a one-time capital expense and don’t bother to think about it until it breaks. At that point they don’t have the time to really look at all the options of new products that multiple manufacturers make, which options they can do without for the price, or shop around for the best deal. In that situation they have to find a solution that works and install it in less than 7 days. And even if you have the time to plan ahead, you rarely have the money to do it right.

Some of the worst decisions come from Pastors who get the mailings from places like Sam Ash or Guitar Center that show their latest price specials. Not because it came from Sam Ash or Guitar Center but because the Pastor doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He’s drawn in by the flashy images and low price numbers and assumes (without any experience or knowledge) what will be the best solution for them. He doesn’t consider whether they need a 24-channel mixer with 6 auxiliaries or they really need a 32-channel mixer with 8 auxiliaries. Will a 12” JBL speaker be enough for their room, or should he buy the 15” speaker from Peavey? What’s the difference?? Some will even make the mistake of choosing a digital console. He can’t necessarily tell you why it’s the best solution for their needs, except that the included features to price ratio looked very attractive.

For me, I have a feeling that I’m going to be a bit unpopular when the leadership reads my budget proposals. Not because I’m asking for more money, although I am. It’s because I’m asking them to carefully consider how we look at our use of technology and why we are using the technology we have and whether it’s worth spending up to $400,000 over the next ten years?

Church Tech Wars!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Is the following statement true or false?
Leading volunteers technically is not leading spiritually. The best tech volunteers can do is to not be noticed, ie– perfection, and no mistakes.

Last weekend Rich, a good friend of mine and I got together to discuss this topic as well as unity between the worship team and the tech team and volunteer appreciation. The podcast starts with a short perspective that embodies many struggles that tech's struggle with in church at 5:00 in we get into the discussion.

Church Tech Wars.MP3

What do you think? Can the role of a church tech leading tech volunteers be in some way pastoral?

How to Mic an Air Guitar

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Like air guitar itself, mic'ing an air guitar is an art itself. The microphone should be placed in such a way as to capture the entire performance and emotion of the musician. Be aware that air guitar players move around a lot, it might be a good idea to use a single omni mic or perhaps a spaced pair of cardioids. And given the amount of movement from the musician, it would be a good idea to use shock-mount microphone clips to minimize low frequency thumps from the musician's jumping. Consider also that the musician may in fact grab the microphone and pretend to scream into it. Using an expensive looking diaphragm microphone here might seem a good idea as it would add to the performance. But consider the replacement cost if the microphone is broken. File this one under funny-conversations-that-I-recently-had-with-musicians-that-turned-into-a-silly-blog-post. Happy Mixing!
;^)

Can anyone recommend a microphone that has a nice "airy" sound to it?

Are You An Artist or Technician?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:13:00 +0000

How do you view yourself as a sound mixer in the church? Are you a technician who creates clarity and minimizes bad resonances or are you an artist? I would argue that the Front Of House engineer is a worship leader and an artist as much as the musicians on the stage. I encourage you to watch this video and ask youself how you listen to music when you are mixing it?

The musicians take take the music from the page and make it come alive but everything filters through you as the house engineer. Everything the audience hears is as a result of YOUR artistry, your decisions about how loud it is, whether you pan the guitar left or right. Do you want the snare to sound sharp or full? How do you use your effects like reverb or delay? The reason this is paramount is that you do not mix for you. It doesn't matter how you like it to sound, you have to think about how hundreds, or thousands of people sitting between you at the console and the front of the stage will hear it.

"Mixing isn't just about ensuring the lead vocal doesn't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher from a technical standpoint."

I'm giving you permission, not that you really need it, to be an artist. Not just a technician. Because I'd argue that it takes genuine artistry, creativity, and perspective to build a great mix. More so, than the technical side of mixing: gain structure, level balance, signal flow… etc. Mixing isn't just about bringing up and down the faders at the right cues and making sure the lead vocal doesn't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. In the video below, a deaf musician tells about how to listen to music from a different perspective. Give it a watch.

The Oops Button

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:17:00 +0000

A lot of little tiny mistakes that me and my volunteers have been making lately has me thinking about something. What can we do as leaders to set our volunteers up for success? One of the things I have been working on lately is trying to automate some of the processes that take up time or manpower.

1. The Input List: Every week I generate an input list. Here is last week's. I started this two years ago at Christmas when we had so many inputs I had to take it to the leadership and ask them to cut back on the production simply because we didn't have any more channels on the console and I decided To Submix. I place copies of the input list on both the FOH and monitor consoles so that when my audio guys walk in they know which channel everything is on, what kind of mic it has, and what monitor channel the musicians are using. No need to go chasing XLRs or poking through crowded floor boxes.

2. Pre-Set The Stage: For the moment we have no one on staff who leads worship. The 3 volunteer worship leaders like the plug-and-play atmosphere of not coming in to start rehearsal while the tech team sets the stage. Everyone feels pressured and the rehearsal time goes longer than it should. Besides, not much changes from one week to the next. Looking over last weeks input list and Planning Center this week, the only thing I'm going to need to change is 3 microphones to 2 line inputs, add 1 DI, and add 1 monitor mix. Something that will take me maybe 20 minutes to set up and line check. That way, my volunteers come in and start mixing.

3. Modify The Setup: The last thing I'm starting to do is modify how things are set up and laid out so that it limits the kinds of mistakes volunteers can make. Several months ago I rebuilt our outboard racks so that instead of turning around to use RTA or start the CD recorder you have everything in front of you, you never need to leave or turn away from the console. The things that seldom change or are set-and-forget are behind you now. At monitor world, I put up a giant peg-board where all our XLR, 1/4" and NL4 cables hang. We used to have them in big blue buckets which got all tangled even when wrapped properly, now it's well organized. We have a big six-foot tall Craftsman toolchest that we have all our mics and DI's and tools in. I need to get some foam and do the same with organizing our microphones in the drawers.

What do you do to set your volunteers up for success and help them create a great worship experience?

Ear Training For Sound Guys

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:51:00 +0000

I never understood the concept of “ear training.” If anything it’s more like brain training. Nevertheless getting to understand the difference between150Hz and 300Hz is important when you are mixing. And that brings me to the subject of my topic today Harman How To Listen.

The tests are broken into 2 categories, Band ID, or defined attribute. In Band ID you are given a stereo program audio track and asked to define which band is being affected. The categories of he tess are: 6dB Peaks & Dips, 6dB Dips Only, 6dB Peaks only, Lowpass, or Highpass. The Attribute tracks have you define: bright/dull, full/thin, Left/right balance, colored/uncolored, reverberant/dry, front/rear, noisy/noise-free, and audible hum/hum free.

The tests are set up in such a way that as you get better and your percentage of accuracy climbs (or stays above a certain percentage) the software adapts by adding another band, or attribute to define. So going from 2 bands to 3 it also narrows the bandwidth of the effected frequency area affected making the difference difficult to spot. In the attribute test you might go from having 2 options (reverberant & dry) to having 3 that require you to define which is the dry track, which is highly reverberant and which is slightly reverberant. And as it adds more bands it becomes more challenging (read: frustrating). After I made the jump from 8 bands to 9 EQ bands I had to throw in the towel. That was as high as I could get. I had a hard time spotting the difference between the reference and equalized track.

Mind you there are other ear training resources like Golden Ears though I've never personally tried Golden Ears before.

Volunteer Training: Starting From Scratch

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:54:00 +0000

I have another new volunteer. Unlike any of my other recruits, this one has an interest in audio but zero knowledge and experience, which will be a challenge of my abilities as a teacher. In the past I have integrated former church sound guys, or former recording studio engineers decades out of practice into our team. However I have never started a volunteer from scratch teaching them how to even listen to music from a mixing perspective. So in the introduction process where I was getting to know him, what he does for a living, his family… I also asked 2 specific questions. First, “what music do you listen to?” I like my audio guys who have schizophrenic musical tastes. In my opinion, when they don’t limit themselves musically they don’t limit their creative idea stream. The second question was, “what technology are you using now?” This question asks the question are you naturally techy and love to learn new technology or are you a late adopter? Are they likely to learn new concepts quickly or slowly in regards to technology? I’ve found that this also has some effect with how they will use technology creatively in the mixing process.

One thing that will make the learning process easy is that for 7 weeks this summer we are doing both our usual rock-based worship, but also an acoustic worship venue, which will consist of a lead vocal an acoustic guitar and maybe an electric piano or some percussion. It should be a very simple worship venue where I am comfortable giving him a little board time with some supervision and not worrying whether there’s too much going on to be overwhelming for him as he's learning how moving faders and turning knobs effects the sound of an instrument.

The things I’m going to cover in his first week is why proper gain structure is important, how groups (or VCAs) helps keep things organized, and the basic reason for EQ, and the difference between sound reinforcement and sound mixing.

In the second training session, I’m going to emphasize mic choice, and mic placement and how that will effect the overall frequency response and tonality of an instrument, and how experimenting here can help you do less EQ on the console later.

In our third training session, I’ll probably have us mix monitors together and teach him how I mix monitors. Or I’m thinking it might be a good time to give him a crash course in room acoustics and how walking the room yields different frequency response from the PA, and why you should make your decisions based upon what the audience will hear, rather than what you are hearing from FOH. It's a long process that depending on his learning curve will probably take several months, if not a year. I'm also going to encourage him to download the Harman HOW TO LISTEN training software. If you haven't tried it, it's free and it really has helped me in my mixing skills. Try it and give me some feedback.

Black is Negative, Red is…

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:50:00 +0000

This week I am working on replacing bad speakers in our main room's PA. It started just before Easter when one of my volunteers came to me stating that the left speaker cluster didn't sound right. So I went through the entire PA and found not 1 but 13 busted drivers. Ouch! But then I got to thinking; this system was designed and installed in 2002, we moved into the building spring of 2003. We have had half a dozen major concerts (Gungor, John Mark MacMillin, BarlowGirl, The Wrecking… can't remember them all) and we crank it to the happy side of 90dB every week, and the system has never been serviced. But if you were to look at it as spending around $200 every year for replacement parts, it's pretty cheap. And Sunday mornings is our bread and butter, meaning the PA can't sound like children talking through tin cans and string.

One of the 8" drivers I pulled out had a rattling sound to it. So I cut the paper cone off and found out the voice coil had turned into a slinky bouncing up and down as the speaker moved, causing horrid distortion and sometimes cutting out altogether. In this image you see our Sound Physics Labs unity horns that I removed from the cabinets. I went through every driver with a multimeter testing to see if the voice coil was blown. If a voicecoil is blown on a speaker it will register as an open connection on a multimeter, if it's still intact, you will read an impedance close to it's nominal rated impedance. After that, I marked the sticker of the driver which are ok and which aren't. the horn in the picture shows 4" midrange drivers but I've only gotten the 8" drivers in so far.
Typically the reason you'd see "dark meat" fried voice coils is because you are pushing far too much power into a driver than it's rated to handle. And doing this causes the voice coil to heat up beyond its ability to dissipate the heat. Speakers produce even small amounts of heat. The reason is that when you put 300 electrical watts into a speaker, you don't get 300 acoustical watts out of it. Some of it is lost as the energy is being transitioned from electrical to mechanical moving energy in the form of heat. Under a speakers normal operating conditions (power rating and impedance) it will dissipate the heat but if the speakers are overpowered or amps start clipping it is unable to dissipate the heat being built up and it simply fries itself. Literally, as seen in the image above.

Usually when you are driving speakers hard, the foam or paper surround will tear. Modernizing technology means that many speakers these days are more than just bits of paper with giant magnets behind them. In some of our EAW speakers in the Youth Room, the midrange drivers are made from Hexacone, see the image above for an example. Hexacone is woven kevlar (think, bullet proof vests) and carbon fiber (think, space shuttle or F1 racing cars) pressed together with an epoxy resin. The 8" drivers I pulled out of our system that were bad were epoxy resin coated paper with a rubber surround that made them seemingly indestructible. If only. That is the reason why the speaker voice coils went before the the cone. Even more interesting is a compound called ferrofluid, which is a black goo that is used to help dissipate heat from your speakers. I'm curious to know how well it works and whether it is something worth investigating. If you have any specific experience with speakers that use ferrofluid cooling, please comment.

Also in case you didn't know the red lead on speakers is positive, black is negative. This will help you not to hook up your speakers out of phase. It's a simple mistake that will create problems, take the advice from someone who had to learn the hard way.

Honey I Shrunk The Loudspeaker Management

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:16:00 +0000

Yesterday I attended the SoCal CTDRT meeting held at the QSC Audio offices. QSC was very hospitible hosting a quick factory tour of their manufacturing process. Then we were treated to an audio demo where we AB tested every speaker in their K series, KW series, the new KLA, and Wideline speaker families. Some cabinets sound better than others in my opinions. The one product we didn't talk about during the day was the DSP-3 and DSP-4 loudspeaker management processors. These really are "honey I shrunk the PA processors." Just a little bigger than an AppleTV and weighing in at under 1 pound this is a really cool item. There is no buttons or switches. This device is controlled and configured via RS-232. Although I'd just grab an RS-232 to USB adaptor and go that route into a laptop. At around $600 street price this allows you to do variable High-Pass, low pass, Parametric EQ, gain leveling, limiting, delay… most things you can think of for managing the signal being fed to loudspeakers it will do. The software also features built in noise generators and metering for testing and tuning.

What I really like about this is the scalability which you can apply this to your system. You can even rackmount 4 DSP modules can be fixed to an optional 2U rackmount allowing 8 in, 8 out processsing to happen for around $2400. And that's a really good deal. And if you can't quite afford the DSP-4, the DSP-3 (which features Euroblock connectors can be found on the street for around $500, and making the total for a 8in, 8 out system processing around $2000. And adapting from XLR or TRS to Euroblock is really cheap.

System Maintenance & Speaker Repair

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 04:23:00 +0000

When was the last time you checked your PA? Three weeks ago one of my audio guys came to me telling me the to check the left cluster of the PA, it wasn’t sounding right to him. So I did. And what I found scared me to do a full check of the entire PA system. Between the main clusters, the under-fill speakers, subwoofers and delay speakers I found 14 busted or distorting drivers. Wow! Then I got to think. We have been in our building since 2004, hosted a handful of major concerts and never had our PA serviced or checked for bad drivers. I guess it could be worse.

When was the last time you checked your PA for distorting or bad speaker drivers? Can’t remember? I guess it’s time you ckecked it. It’s not too hard. Without hiring a professional with expensive test equipment I used my iPod of test music and turned off all speakers but one and listened carefully to the sound of the speaker for distortion or big holes in the frequency response. I then repeated this process turning on individual speaker amplifiers to listen to speakers individually within the clusters. Using this technique I was able to hear big drops in high, mid or low frequency response indicating which drivers in the cabinets are bad. I’m also ordering a few spare drivers for the same reason you keep a spare projector bulb. When you need it, you need it now, not to wait for an order confirmation and then shipping, and so on. It’s just good stewardship. I have got 3 replacement drivers in and replaced, I'm waiting on pricing and shipping details from a dealer for one of the manufacturers to order them.

UPDATE: Dave's comment reminded me of something. For testing the subs I used the signal generator in the Audio Tools app for my iPad. I played 30Hz, 40Hz, 50Hz, 60Hz, 70Hz, and 80Hz tones through the subs and found one of the drivers in one of our subs was buzzing badly. For the tops however, I simply used my favorite recording of Beethoven's 8th. It became pretty obvious when i heard nothing above 5kHz that something was wrong with the high frequencies in one cabinet. However Dave's comment about using music to evaluate your PA being limited or dangerous is valid. In fairness, some of the tracks on my test music list are test tones and sweeps, I should have mentioned that earlier. And he also brings up a good point of checking everything that is downstream of the console:
Do you have any signal processors or crossovers you can bypass to hear how it's effecting the sound? Have you checked that the problem may not be the speakers but the amplifier? In our youth room I found one problem wasn't the speaker, or the amp but that the cable had a small thread of copper bridging the positive and negative terminals sending the amp into protect mode instantly.

Audio Volume Policy Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:52:00 +0000

In my previous post talking about volume policies I outlined:

Why are you interested in creating a volume policy? Is it a want or a need? For us, in the season of where we were in 2009, we NEEDED to communicate to some members of the congregation that the vision for our worship time is not for sale.

I mentioned that the policy has to support, not take the vision for your worship time in another direction. I mentioned that it's dangerous to pick an arbitrary volume number to stick to. I also talked about the need to seriously look at how your room acoustics and PA system shape the overall worship experience. Lastly I talked about the need to give your worship music style a serious look.

Before downloading the document, please remember that this document reflects what we are doing at Sunridge Church. If you want to plagiarize most of this document to help shape your own feel free, but your policy needs to reflect YOUR church and IT'S vision. We chose to base our policy on OSHA standards. Although, technically, OSHA only applies to employees since it's Occupational Safety and Health…

Audio Volume Policy Document

dB Meter iPad Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:19:00 +0000

Daddy got a new iPad for Christmas, and I'm loving all the great things I can do on it. Some apps are really clever, some I keep around just for humor. Right now I'm looking for a good dB Meter or possibly an RTA (real time analyzer) that I can use when I"m mixing FOH or walking the room. Really there are 2 categories, free and paid. And there are a few things I want built in. I want to be able to switch through between A and C weighting, and it must have some sort of Fast or Slow setting for the response time.

For the past few months I have been looking at getting a good RTA for my iPad when I'm mixing FOH. The Problem with iPad RTA's is that they're no good. In fact, the whole point of an RTA is to show you visually what your ears are telling you audibly. In the picture above, a frequency response graph shows that below around 170Hz the low frequency sensitivity drops off significantly.

So, that leaves us with generic dB apps. And given the low frequency roll off of the iPad, I'm really looking or a good dB meter or a free one. Last night I downloaded Decibel Ultra, a free app that features simultaneous viewing of peak and average dB readings with a variable rate that I can move from 50ms to 1000ms. However this does not feature any A or C weightings

Decibel Meter Pro is $0.99. This app seems to have a slow medium and fast setting built in by showing the average and peak and MAX (a peak hold function) on the same graph. The GUI looks pretty cool, it's a sort of sound man meets Master Chief from Halo, but it doesn't feature any A/C weighting that I can find in the description, and that puts this on the bottom half of the maybe list.

SPL Meter for iPad is $1.99. And I will admit that I like this app just because it looks like a vintage piece of equipment. It has a slow/fast switch to change the response of the reading, it switches between A & C weighting. Perhaps the only thing I think might be annoying is the 10dB increments of measuring. Many times our worship songs will start close to 100dB and then it will drop to the low 90s or high 80s really quick. Cannons by Phil Whicham is a great example of that. I want the dB meter to show me what's going on without constantly having to change what's going on to get an accurate reading. With our RadioShack-o-meter it has a 10dB range but will display everything in that range from -10to +6 giving essentially a 16dB range, much more than this.

Finally, the big boy is theSoundMeter app from Faber Acoustical weighing in at $19.99. This app has everything. But for $20, it should. It features A, C, or flat weighting. Fast, slow, or impulse responses for the meter as well as a peak-hold function and an Leq (which will calculate the total equivalent level you have been exposed to over a long period of time), which is very handy. But I'm still not sold on all this for $20 especially when Faber mentions that this doesn't even meet ANSI or IEC standards. But then none of the apps do. So what do you get for the extra $18 over the others?

Here is another way to spend $20, which I'm starting to think is the way to go…

Cool Toys On The Cheap

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:52:00 +0000

I just found a few really cool things online. Actually, that happens all the time. But today it happens to be in the wonderful world of audio.

JK Audio BlueDriver - what it does is it converts audio to digital and transmits it over bluetooth to your phone or other pairing device. They make Male and Female XLR versions for input and output of audio signal. Still not sure how I'd use it, but it is cool!

The second problem is that I have been trying to fix is that turning off the power amps in our amp room is a very lengthy process requiring a door key, and what seems like a half mile walk from FOH. I just came across a power conditioner from Tripp•Lite that features IP controlability. So, I could remote turn off the power amps from the FOH location with a computer. We can also use this in other areas of tech to remotely turn on and off the Projectors, cameras and switchers at Video World at the start and end of the day.

Tech Budgeting: Planning For The Fail?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:50:00 +0000

At first the thought of planning for technical failure sounds puzzling, but read on, there is method to the madness. I'm going to depart from tech slightly and use the metaphor of a car. Owning a car there are things you have to do to keep it running, aside from the weekly top-up of gas. There's the regular oil change every 6000-10000 miles, there's changing the belts and hoses ever few years or so. Flushing the radiator once a year, rotating the tires, working on the brakes or transmission. In short, over the life span of a car there is a lot of mantenance. But it doesn't happen all at once. And by properly maintaining and caring for the vehicle you are able to extend the lifetime of the car to sometimes who knows how long? Although, there comes a point in time where the vehicle's overall age conspires to make for more frequent maintenance and it becomes more practical (especially with reliability concerns) to replace it.

The same analogy is true in tech world, there's not a whole lot of regular maintenance you need to do in your audio system, but when you don't take care of it the problems seem to compound and things begin break quickly. But one way of planning for this is something manufacturers and economists call "planned obsolescence." When you bought your console, or speakers, or other parts of your audio system, the manufacturers planned for the lifespan of that piece of equipment to last a certain amount of time. For analog consoles, you should usually plan for easy 5-7 years. After that, you should start expecting some minor problems. Our Allen & Heath ML5000 is circa 2002, and it has one channel that is out, and 2 channels will no longer pan to the Right. I also did a frequency response analysis of the console, using pink noise and the Phonic from the input to the output of the mix-buss and I saw droopage at the extremities of the frequency response from 20Hz-30Hz of about 4dB and from 16kHz- 20kHz of about 5dB, which indicates that the capacitors in the console are starting to get dried out. Which immediately accounted for why I have noticed the need to boost all the high frequencies above 8kHz by about 5dB on most channels. For a while I thought I was going deaf at those frequencies, but now I know that the console is losing it's ability to accurately reproduce those frequencies. Why? Because Allen&Heath didn't intend for it to last close to 10 years and electrical components inside the console are starting to wear out.

I know from comments in the previous post that when your budget you don't get rollover money from the previous year. But you really need that in order to save for large items like consoles, or new PA systems over 7-10 years. And when you go to the leadership to talk about this, you need to communicate that this is not a one-fix-all-forever problem. You will need to do this again in 7-10 years. And sooner when things unexpectedly break. But you need to go in and talk about the concept of planned obsolescence and how as a staff and leadership you need to plan on having to shell out money in the next 7-10 years again to rebuild or redesign the system to work properly and also meet the needs of ministry you have that were different when you put it together 10 years ago.

Quick update on the youth room: before we buy new equipment, we are talking about what we want that to be in the future as a multipurpose room, and what the youth and other ministries need that room to be/do so that we can figure out how tech will not limit their ability to do ministry in that space. Lots of leadership conversations I'm apart of, and lots of vision-casting before we decide what we want in that room as far as equipment because design and vision come define the end use and therefore the selection of equipment that will go in that room. Will it be little QSC KW speakers as a multipurpose room, or will we use that room for small (under 350) concerts and need lots of speaker area to push volume?

What do you think? Can you plan long term for new ministry needs? How do you think long term about budgeting and have only a yearly budget?

Tech Budgeting: System Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Blasongame) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:08:00 +0000

It has been a rather interesting week for me. I experienced a catastrophic system failure in the youth room this week. I went in to help out High School Group on Wednesday and when I got there the youth worship team said they couldn't get any sound to pass.

In the past it has often been something wasn't turned on, or signal wasn't being routed to the speakers, or we bumped a breaker and I need to reset it. This week it was almost as bad as when I found out we had an electrical fire in the youth room. I did what I normally do when things go bump in the tech world night. I plugged in the iPod, started playing music. I solo'd the channels to check for incoming signal. Ok, good. Then I brought the channels up in the house, nope. Is it showing signal on the meter bridge? Yeah, but only on the Left buss. Recheck panning and routing, all good. That's weird. I move the panning around and I only hear the low frequencies coming out of one of the speakers. Even weirder. Long story short, the console has died. Not that it's a shocker. It's an ancient Mackie that is between 15 - 20 years old. There are 8 channels that don't work, several aux sends on other channels are laden with noise or distortion. We all dreaded the moment when the console finally bit the dust. And on wednesday that day came.

But in the same way that celebrities die in threes, so it was on Wednesday in the youth room. When the console died it took 2 power amps with it. I tried to see what happened but the power amps either instantly go into protect-mode and won't do anything, or, they will only pass harmonic distortion. And because I have the speakers bi-amped, that's why I was only hearing low frequencies from one of the speakers.

Thankfully, and ironically, we have an even older mackie 12 channel field mixer that I wired up on Thursday morning along with a spare power amp we normally use when we rent subs for concerts or need a portable sound system outside. And I was able to kind of make a system that works, and the band still has 2 auxes for wedges. It's not pretty but it's the best I could do in 24 hours.

This made me think about budgeting. How should you create a budget for tech world? I used to look at it from a yearly goal perspective, but with technology it's so expensive you have to think long term, it's very difficult to set goals, and objectives for one year and allow that to drive your budgeting. Not saying it can't be done, but I personally haven't figured out how to make it work. One of the thoughts I've always gone to is the one of looking at it from a holistic functional planning perspective. Our church for example, invested between the main room, and the youth room, somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000 when we moved into the building 9 years ago. If you look at it from the perspective that every 10 years your systems wear out and you need to replace them, you should divide your total investment by 10, and (theoretically at least) you should have a $60,000-$70,000 annual budget. Some years you're not going to do much: regular maintenance, and consumables. So the money can sit in the bank and roll over to the next years, but some years you are going to spend a lot just to redo the entire lighting system, or move from SD to HD video… etc. And in moments like that you are going to need to have sometimes a few years budget saved to be able to do what you need to do, and not have to beg the leadership, every time you need money. The danger is, if you don't ask filtering your needs through the vision of the church and the right intentions it will only be a matter of time before you continually asking the leadership for money is looked upon as conspicuous consumption. Or you are forced through too many conversations and meetings to justify the expenditure.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of regularly blogging again. But who knows how that will go. Please be praying for me, I have a lot of stuff I'm juggling and would still like time to blog. I'll try and post part two of this next week. Comments and questions are always welcome!