Form Factors – Narrowing the Field

The sound reinforcement requirements of a church are different than those of more typical live performances, so once you’ve decided what type (dynamic or condenser) and polar pattern (omni or uni) you’re going to need for each application – pastor, soloist, choir, worship leader, praise band – there’s the form factor to consider.   This is actually pretty simple because the solutions are fairly straightforward.

We’ll look at them one by one.

Lectern Mic

Lectern

One of the most common microphones used in houses of worship are lectern or podium microphones.  Gooseneck microphones are recommended since they position the mic up high and close to the speaker’s mouth.  These are usually cardioid condenser microphones since they are very small and unobtrusive and also since their greater sensitivity allows the microphone to be positioned 10”-14” and a little off-center from a speaker’s mouth.

One of the reasons that the mic is positioned off-center is the undesirable popping sound of plosives (p’s and t’s).  When the mic is off to the side, the air blast that causes those plosives will go past the microphone rather than right into the microphone.  Using a windscreen also helps.

Tips:

• Make sure you only have one microphone on at the lectern, to minimize comb filtering
• Use a pop filter and a shock mount to minimize unwanted sounds.
• Turn off unused microphones

Boundary Mic

Altar

The altar is another area that you may need to mic.  In that case a gooseneck microphone may not be aesthetically pleasing, so boundary microphones – usually condenser types – are the typical solution.

Tips:

• Try not to place them too close to the edge of the altar since they’re limited to a 60o vertical pick-up angle.   If the microphone isn’t placed deep enough into the altar, you run the risk of the speaker talking over the microphone instead of into it.
• Turn off unused microphones.
• Position speakers within 24”-36” of the mic.

The low profile of boundary mics also subjects them to the risk of having speakers place objects over them and since they’re typically sensitive condenser-type mics, they’re susceptible to noises like page turning.   Still, they’re usually the best choice for altar applications.

Lavalier Mic

Lavalier

One way to make sure that the pastor or worship leader is heard clearly is to use a lavalier microphone where the speaker or singer can move around freely without concerns about being picked up by the mic.    Here’s where you want to think about polar patterns

Tips:

• My choice is the omnidirectional lavalier microphone because you don’t need to be as concerned with placement – you can aim it in any direction and there’s no proximity effect.    There’s minimal pickup of wind or cable noise – and they are less susceptible to plosives. Omni lavaliers sound natural and they’re the easiest to place.
• On the other hand, if you’re experiencing gain before feedback problems, you may need to go with a unidirectional lav microphone, sometimes with a cardioid or even a supercardioid pattern   It will also help to reduce background noise in a nosy environment. Remember that they’re more susceptible to cable noise, plosives, wind noise, proximity effect and other things that will color the sound quality and add more artifacts than you desire.

If you can make the omni work, that’s the way to go.   Placement is usually about 8” below the mouth in the center, because the pickup will be affected if the speaker moves his head from side to side.   That’s a common problem with any lav mic. If possible, it’s also beneficial to use a windscreen.

Tips:

• Secure the cable to the wearer’s clothing to eliminate cable noise.
• If multiple mics are used when the speaker approaches the lectern or alter, remember to turn unused mics off, otherwise comb filtering may result.

Countryman Mic

Headworn (Headset)

The headworn mic is by far preferred over lavaliers in most church applications these days, though some people don’t like to wear anything on their heads. There are some very tiny headworn microphones that hook over one ear and are barely noticeable.

They take care of just about all the problems experienced with lavalier microphones and offer some significant advantages:

• Gain before feedback is much better – the mic is right next to the speaker’s mouth. Since the mic moves with the speaker’s head, the sound level and quality don’t change.
• They are omni condenser mics with multiple color options so skin tone can be matched – with single ear and dual ear options.
• Placement is easy – left or right side doesn’t matter.
• Overall, you’ll experience more consistent sound quality, fewer feedback problems and better gain before feedback.

The Choir and the Praise Band

Here are a few quick tips for miking the choir and members of your praise band. Volumes can be – and have been – written on various techniques for achieving a specific sound, but this overview will get your started.

The Choir

Stand-mounted or hanging mics can be used to pick up the choir. In almost all cases, these are condenser mics.  They have a flatter, natural frequency response and are sensitive enough to work well at a distance.

Try to mic the choir as if it’s an acoustic instrument.  It’s the same way you’d mic an orchestra.   You’re trying to capture the ensemble without coloring it too much.  Most often, these are unidirectional condenser mic.

Tip:

• The 3-to-1 rule applies. Typically you’re going to position the mic 2-3 feet in front of the choir with the most sensitive point of the mic aimed toward the back row of the choir, and adjacent mics about 4 – 6 feet apart from each other.   That helps provide even coverage because the most sensitive point of the mic is aimed at the singers who are furthest and the singers who are closest are positioned at a less sensitive point, so you’ll get nice, even coverage.

Tip:

• If you’re using hanging mics, you need to be careful not to hang the mics over the heads of the singers, rather than 2’-3’ in front of their mouths, aimed at the back row.  Failing to do that will results in a dull, dark sound with very little sound level reaching the microphone. You need to be able to mic their mouths (the sound source) and not the top of their heads.

Tip: 

• It is best to use as few mics as possible and avoid as much overlap as possible.   If you need to use more than one and the first one is 2’ away from the choir at an 130o angle, the way to position it is to follow the 3-to-1 rule and position the next mic 6’ away.   And if that’s not enough, place another microphone 6’ feet away.

The Congregation

Miking the congregation isn’t a musical application but it is something that comes up since adding ambient sound creates a more natural mix for broadcast feeds or recording.    It’s similar to choir miking since you can think of the congregation as a large ensemble.

Tips:

• You will probably want to use some type of unobtrusive unidirectional microphone and only for recording or broadcast purposes where you need to add some ambience.
• Don’t mic the congregation for sound reinforcement purposes.   If you need to hear an individual in the congregation, the best way to do that is with a wireless handheld.

The Praise Band

Here are some basic member-by-member suggestions:

Vocals

• Handheld or headworn mic.
• Unidirectional – dynamic or condenser – depending on the sound quality you’re trying to achieve.

Look for a good shock mount that eliminates some of the handling noise. The SM58, for example, has a very good shock mount. You can tap on the microphone and you won’t hear very much.  A cheap mic can sound like a freight train when you do the same thing.

Electric guitar amp

• Dynamic or condenser
• Make sure the sensitivity of the condenser mic is designed for the application.

Beta 181 is a good choice. You can hang it over the top of the guitar amp in front of the speaker without needing a mic stand.

Drums 

• Dynamic mics for snare and tom-toms, which handle the high SPLs in these applications.
• Condenser mics are useful for overheads and cymbals.
• Percussion mics might be condensers as well for general area miking applications.
• Kick drum: Beta 52A is the Shure mic designed specifically for use as a bass drum mic, but a Beta 91A boundary microphone can also be a good choice for its low-profile design and set-up ease.
• Snare drum: Good choices include SM57 or Beta 57A mics.  Place the boom-mounted mic in front of the kit, a few inches from the snare drum edge, next to and just above the high tom head for a natural sound.
• Toms: Beta 56A or Beta 98AMP mics can be used.  For the best isolation, consider placing a microphone inside each tom-tom.
• Overheads: A Beta 181/C or PG81 mic can be positioned about a foot above the drummer’s head or a matched pair of either model can be used for stereo miking.

Grand or upright piano

• Condenser mics for flatter, more natural frequency response.
• Stand-mounted or boundary mics are also good choices. Boundary mics can actually be taped inside the lid of the piano.
• KSM137 is a good choice for a stand-mounted mic.  It can withstand high sound pressure levels and it’s also available in a stereo kit, making it ideal for X/Y configuration miking preferred by many live sound engineers.
• For mounting inside the piano, you can use a Beta 91A cardioid condenser microphone. This microphone will work for both a grand and upright piano.

It all comes down to this

What’s really important is knowing how the mic sounds, using your ears to chose the right one and then knowing where to place it.  Moving the microphone just a few inches in one direction or another can improve the sound quality dramatically. Time for experimentation is time well spent.

One way to do this at home is to check out the Mic Listening Lab where you can listen to many different types of mics on many different instruments (including vocals) so that you can hear the differences for yourself. You’ll also find an “Audition This Mic” link at the bottom of product pages on the Shure site.

Choose the right mic, put it in the right place, keep it as close to the sound source, use as few mics as possible, turn off unused mics and trust your ears.

View the first article in the Talkin’ Church Mic Basics series (Choosing the Right Mic).

ABOUT GINO SIGISMONDI: Gino Sigismondi has been active in the music and audio industry for nearly twenty years. Currently managing the Systems Support department, Gino brings his years of practical experience in professional audio to the product training seminars he conducts for Shure customers, dealers, distribution centers, and internal staff. He is the author of the Shure educational publications “Selection and Operation of Personal Monitors,” “Audio Systems Guide for Music Educators,” and “Selection and Operation of Audio Signal Processors.”

Gino spent several post-college years as a live sound engineer for Chicago-area sound companies, nightclubs, and local acts. He continues to remain active as a musician and sound engineer, expanding his horizons beyond live music to include sound design for modern dance and church sound.

Different Transducer Types

A transducer is anything that can take one form of energy and convert it to another form of energy. That’s what a microphone does.

A mic measures the variations in air pressure that we recognize as sound waves and changes them into electrical signals that can be manipulated for sound reinforcement, for recording purposes or for broadcast.  The acoustic wave is converted into an analogous electrical signal. All microphones do this, but they do it in different ways.  So a microphone is really just a measurement device – measuring variations in air pressure and providing a corresponding electrical signal.

As the front end of the audio system, the microphone is one of the more important elements in the signal path.   If you don’t capture the sound accurately before it gets into the electrical domain, there really isn’t a great way to fix it later on. The more of that you do on the back end with processors and other tools, the more work is involved and the less natural it will sound.  If you choose the right mic and put it in the right place, everything that follows will be that much better.

Dynamic and condenser mics are most popular types.  There are other types – ribbon mics, crystal mics, control magnetic, and carbon mics, for example – but those are largely historical, so we won’t cover them here.

The most popular is the dynamic mic.  It’s a very simple device – rugged, reliable and in most cases, not very expensive.   Sound waves move a thin, lightweight diaphragm, typically a very thin layer of a Mylar®. The physical energy required to make this diaphragm move is not very great.

Cutaway of a Dynamic Microphone

The diaphragm has a coiled wire attached to it and is suspended in a magnetic field.  A basic property of electricity is that when a wire cuts through a magnetic field, a current is induced in that wire.  As sound waves strike the diaphragm and move it back and forth, the coil also moves back and forth in the magnetic field, inducing current and a corresponding varying voltage in the wire.   Those wires go out to the connector at the bottom of the mic. Some microphones might have an output transformer to step up the impedance and provide a little more signal, some don’t. That’s the basic structure of a dynamic microphone.

It’s a completely passive device, so there’s no additional power needed to get it up and running.  Plug it into your system and you’re good to go.  Because they are such simple devices, they’re not very expensive, they’re very reliable and they’re hard to kill.  Think SM58® and SM57.

There are some limitations, of course.  They’re not very sensitive.  It takes more energy get that mass of the coil that’s attached to the diaphragm moving so they’re better for up-close applications and loud sound sources.  They’re not very good for miking sound sources from far away, like a choir for instance.

They’re nearly impossible to overdrive.  A human being can’t create enough sound pressure level to overdrive a dynamic microphone.  There is no way, for instance, that a singer can destroy an SM58 by singing too loud.  There may be some distortion at the input of the mixer if its gain control is set too high, but the problem is not happening at the microphone.  You’d have to mic the space shuttle for something like that to happen.

Most dynamic mics sound pretty good, but there’s a limitation in frequency response in terms of how much high and low frequency it can pick up.

Cutaway of a Condenser Microphone

Condenser microphones are a little more complicated.

One critical difference is that the diaphragm of a condenser mic does not have the mass of a coil hanging off of it.  The actual diaphragm is metalized, usually gold-layered or gold-sputtered and the diaphragm is tensioned over an air gap above a charged metal backplate.

When the sound wave strikes the diaphragm, it doesn’t have to work as hard to move it because there’s no mass of coil attached to it – and that’s one reason why condenser microphones are more sensitive.   They’re designed for quieter sound sources.

The output of a condenser microphone is much lower and the impedance is much higher, so there are some additional electronics – specifically, a microphone pre-amp – that’s part of the mic design. The pre-amp requires phantom power, supplemental voltage that powers up the electronics of the condenser microphone.  Phantom power is typically supplied by the mixer the microphone is connected to.

If you don’t provide a condenser microphone with phantom power, it simply will not work.   It’s a call we often receive at Shure from people who are accustomed to using a dynamic mic like an SM58 but purchased, for the first time, a $300 condenser mic.   They plug it into their sound system and it doesn’t work.   This leads to a longer discussion of phantom power and a suggestion that they turn on their mixer’s phantom power switch.   It’s an important detail to remember. There are a few condenser microphones that will run off a battery, but this is far less common.

They’re more sensitive to environmental conditions and they’re more expensive than dynamic mics because there are many more internal electronic components in their design.   But on the flip side, they’re more sensitive and offer a wider frequency response so they’re more natural sounding.   However, due to the active electronics that are part of condenser mic design, it is possible to overload or cause distortion in the microphone. Some condenser microphones are equipped with a “pad” that can be engaged to reduce the sensitivity of the microphone when used with loud sound sources.

Frequency Response

This can be divided into two categories – and really, it’s just about how the microphone sounds:

Shaped Response – can take many different forms.

The X-axis in this diagram shows the frequency of human hearing, from 20 Hz to about 20,000 Hz.  The Y-axis shows the output level of the microphone. You can look at the different frequencies to determine how much signal that particular mic is putting out.   You’ll notice at some frequencies, the output of the mic is lower or less sensitive and on others, the output of the mic is higher.   This can provide an advantage in certain scenarios.

For example:  If you’re looking at the 2-6 KHz range, the SM58 mic is more sensitive and has more output.  This is good because this is the range of most human speech where consonants can be heard.  Consonants define speech intelligibility.   In a church application, the message is the most important thing – so it’s important to have a microphone with good sensitivity in this range.

Now, look at response in the range below 100 Hz. The response drops off pretty dramatically.  In the case of the human voice, that’s OK unless you’re trying to mic a bass singer in a gospel quartet. What happens in that range is mostly unwanted noise, wind noise, handling noise, vibration, so if you have a mic that rolls off a lot of that, it’s beneficial for cleaning up the overall sound quality.   Response below 100 Hz is usually unnecessary unless you’re miking a grand piano, bass drums or the occasional bass singer.

Flat Response – is just what it sounds like.  The output of the microphone is pretty much the same across all frequencies.

It will pass everything along, whether or not it’s needed or desired.  It’s a very natural sounding and very uncolored frequency response.   For acoustic instruments, for example, where you don’t want to alter the sound in any way, a flat response mic might be the best choice.

Which response you need really depends on what you’re miking.  A wide-ranging flat response mic will pick up sounds that you don’t necessarily need and it won’t color the sound coming out of it.

Directional Response- This is how the microphone responds to sounds coming at it from different directions.  There are two categories:

Omnidirectional – sound coming from all directions
Uni-directional – sound coming from one direction

Bi-directional is another, less common category that refers to a mic that picks up sound from two directions, but we’ll focus on two that you are most likely to encounter.

Omnidirectional (“omni”) mics are sensitive to sounds coming from all directions.   They have a coverage angle of 360o so it doesn’t matter where the mic is pointed.   The response will be the same. Omnidirectional microphones are good for speech applications, as lavalier or headset microphones. In this case, they offer the most “uncolored” response (see proximity effect below), and since you don’t have to worry about picking up the drum kit, the lack of off-axis rejection isn’t really a concern.

Unidirectional (“uni”) mics take on a couple of different variations, the most popular of which is the cardioid pattern. It has a heart-shaped pickup pattern; that’s where the “cardio” comes from.  When you look at the diagram, you’ll see that there’s very little pickup 180o off the center.

The cardioid pattern is designed to capture the sound source you want to capture and reduce pickup of everything else, since it effectively rejects off-axis sound.  On a stage with a lot of sound sources and a lot of noise, it’s very beneficial compared to an omni which will tend to pick up everything. Since the cardioid mic is less sensitive to other sounds, like the sounds coming out of loudspeakers, it allows you to get more gain before feedback than you would with an omni.

Like everything else in audio, there are some trade-offs.  One of these is proximity effect, something that every unidirectional mic exhibits. That’s the boost in low frequencies as you move closer to the microphone.  Sometimes people like this effect and other times that bass response will muddy things up.   Omni mics don’t product this effect since the frequency response is the same no matter how far the sound source is from the mic itself.   Cardioid mics are also more susceptible to handling, wind noise and vibration.

Supercardioid and hypercardioid are even more directional.  There’s even greater rejection at the sides but a little bit more pickup in the null area (at the back of the microphone).   The overall sensitivity to ambient sound is less than even a cardioid mic.   An experienced vocalist in your church can really benefit from this type of tight polar pattern, but a less experienced singer who moves the mic around in a theatrical fashion will run into problems.

Keep in mind that there’s never a one-size fits-all option.  It all depends on what sounds best for your application.

The Myth of Microphone Reach

One common misconception is that directional microphones reach like a zoom lens on a camera – that you can take your viewfinder and focus on something far away and bring it closer. Microphones don’t work that way.

Sound waves are much longer than light waves and microphones are not able to bend those waves to bring them closer. Microphones don’t have a reach associated with them. What that means is that you need to get the mic as close as possible to the sound source for a couple of reasons:

1. The microphone is not going to go out and isolate a particular sound.
2. Sound waves follow the inverse square law.  That says that the energy of a sound wave drops as it spreads out in space. Every time you double the distance between the sound source and the microphone, you lose 6 dB of signal, which is quite a bit. If I move the microphone one foot away, the drop is sound is noticeable. If I move it from 1 foot to two feet away, that’s a 12 dB drop which will be perceived as more than half as loud.  So be aware that when you’re moving microphones further and further away, you are losing a lot of the direct signal.

What this graphic shows is that there’s a certain amount of noise and reverberation in any given room. That’s a concept known as critical distance which is the distance at which the direct sound of what you’re trying to mic and the ambient noise and reverberation become equal.  When your microphone is beyond that critical distance, you’ll hear all the ambience in the room at a level equal to the direct sound.  It’s the sound that some people describe as being in the ‘bottom of a barrel’ or sounding like a ‘tin can’. Every room will be different and if you don’t want to have to calculate what the critical distance is for every worship space, just try to remember to keep the microphones as close to the sounds sources as you can.

Another phenomenon you may experience is comb filtering which is where the audio signal takes multiple paths to reach the microphone, possibly reflecting off a tabletop or a lectern and having those reflections combined back in the microphone itself.    When that happens, the frequency response graph looks like a comb – that’s where the term comes from.   It has a very hollow, phase-y sound that’s not very natural and can really be distracting at times.   It’s another reason to keep the microphone close to the sound source, so that the direct sound will be much louder than the reflected sound.  It’s also a good argument for longer gooseneck microphones in lectern application because it keeps the mic further away from surfaces and closer to the speaker’s mouth.

You can also experience electronic comb filtering.  This happens when there is more than one microphone picking up the same sound source.  It can easily happen in a choir application.  When the same sound source goes to two different microphones and those mics are combined back in the mixer, you end up with the same comb filtering frequency response effect.

How you deal with electronic comb filtering is by following the 3-to-1 Rule.   It’s a good rule to remember in sound applications where more than one mic is being used.  It states that for every unit of distance from the mic to the sound source, the next microphone should be three times that distance away.

Feedback

It’s a common problem in many sound systems.  But it’s not the fault of the microphone. Feedback results from the interaction of all the components in the sound system.

Here’s what’s happening: the sound source goes into the microphone and the microphone signal goes into an amplifier and then a loudspeaker where it’s made louder. That same sound comes out of the loudspeaker and is picked up by the microphone again – it forms an audio loop that results in the sound or sounds we know as feedback.  You can’t buy a microphone that “doesn’t have any feedback in it”.

Tips for avoiding feedback:

• The way to combat feedback is to keep the microphone as close to the sound source as possible.
• Keep the mics as far away from the loudspeakers as possible.   If you can keep them separated from the loudspeakers, it’s less likely that they will pick up the sound and create a feedback loop.
• Lower the speaker output.
• Move the loudspeaker farther away from the microphone. Each time this distance is doubled, the sound system output can be increased by 6dB.
• Move the loudspeaker closer to the listener. Each time this distance is halved, the sound system output will increase by 6dB.
• Use in-ear monitoring systems in place of floor monitors.
• Acoustically treat the room (if possible) to eliminate hard, reflective surfaces like glass, marble and wood.

Some people think using unidirectional microphones will solve their feedback problems, but it’s actually less effective than many of the suggestions above. EQ can also be used and room acoustics are also a factor, but in most cases, following the first three tips here will go a long way in reducing feedback problems.

ABOUT GINO SIGISMONDI: Gino Sigismondi has been active in the music and audio industry for nearly twenty years. Currently managing the Systems Support department, Gino brings his years of practical experience in professional audio to the product training seminars he conducts for Shure customers, dealers, distribution centers, and internal staff. He is the author of the Shure educational publications “Selection and Operation of Personal Monitors,” “Audio Systems Guide for Music Educators,” and “Selection and Operation of Audio Signal Processors.”

Gino spent several post-college years as a live sound engineer for Chicago-area sound companies, nightclubs, and local acts. He continues to remain active as a musician and sound engineer, expanding his horizons beyond live music to include sound design for modern dance and church sound.

That something will go wrong seems to be the motto of most audio teams in the Church, as well as any other form of live and recorded music. Whether at the stadium, restaurant or other social gathering; it’s not so much the question “if” things go wrong, but when. For volunteer audio teams, musicians and singers in the church, knowing the five signs of a technically challenged team can make all the difference between ship-shape and ship-wreck. Here’s how to navigate through the storms at sea and chart a course for team success.

Branon Dempsey leading worship with a Shure ULX-S/SM58 Wireless Mic.

No Navigation Plan

Symptom: The easiest thing to do is throw caution to the wind, begin the service and catch things on the fly. If you do this, you will catch more than what’s on the fly as it will hit you over the head.

The cure: Preparation, as simple as it sounds is often the most overlooked and under-thought. Go figure. You rush up to the church or venue, wherever you came from. Quickly flip on the power, roll out a few lines, climb back on your stool and wait for the band to show: this is procrastination.
One safe way to help you prepare for your team is to create a checklist before every service. In this list, I include things like:

• power supply and audio processors
• check cables and connectors
• test mics and check capsules/cartridges
• test the signal chain overall
• check wireless components
• locate the headphones to help test channels
• put in an mp3 and test the mains and monitor systems
• digital scene tweaking, gain structures and so forth

You’re really preparing before you prepare. We need to be ready, before the worship team arrives, not during their set up. When you’re prepared, you can spend that extra time serving the band by checking on their logistical needs, helping with load-in and being a servant.

No One at the Helm

Symptom: Communication is the number one failure for most audio/media teams. Whether it’s changing the rules or players in middle of the game or not appointing a leader who calls the shots, miscommunications lead to huge shipwrecks.

The Cure:  When the worship leader or pastor plans the set list, it needs to also go to the Audio Team before the rehearsal and/or service. This enables the team to be in the know to prepare set up, lines, mix and space on the stage. Keep your game plan consistent, on time and unchanged as much as possible. When change does occur, you’re able to roll with the punches.

• When there is an on-the-fly change, it first needs to be discussed with the Audio and Media Team and Lead Engineer ASAP.
• Changing players is also a big deal. It’s common to have a musician or singer to be replaced and/or missing for the weekend. If it’s somebody like the drummer or bass player, this is a huge adjustment in the respect of equipment and sound needs. If you have a new player who shows up, unannounced on a service/event without communicating first, you’re in for a shark bite.
• My head AE and instructor Kent Morris (Editor’s note: Kent is a frequent contributor to Shure Notes) has an awesome approach. He will go down to the front of the stage and ask the guest musician to share his or her exact needs. If the guest brings in a piece of gear that is not the right application or fit, he will work toward a positive solution.
• Another key factor is channeling the verbiage through one person on stage. Whether it is the MD or Worship Leader, the Engineer can hear one complaint / sound need at a time and not five people all at once. Say no to the choirs.

Attitudes That Run-Aground

Symptom: Uncommunicated last minute or unspoken changes between worship staff, pastoral staff and the audio team

The Cure: If communication doesn’t sink your ship, attitudes will.

• Work with the Worship Leader toward a model that curbs unwanted personalities. How, you say? It begins with you. The more professional, calm and polite you can be, the more people notice and will respond by adjusting their behavior to yours.
• Attitudes need to walk the plank in order to get the positive minds back on deck. I don’t suggest posting a sign that says ”Thou Shalt Not Whine.” Although, it may be effective for some, but for others, they just need a good kick in the kindness. A soft answer truly does turn away wrath.
• Real teamwork is about learning how to serve others. For example, when you have really great service at a restaurant, your dining experience is enhanced. The same is true at worship services.  The worship team is like wait staff – serving a meal to enjoy for a common goal.
• Listen and follow through when leaders give direction – even if you disagree. It’s about the team, not about you.
• Know your position on the ship and do your part.
• Avoid telling others how to do their jobs. Let the leader do it.
• If there is conflict either go directly to that individual privately, or work it out with the leader of that ministry. All in all – serve one another.
• A happy team is also a productive team. Like any job or volunteer position elsewhere, your collective positive attitude as a team will keep you on course. You’re able to think clearer and respond more quickly because you’re focused on the plan and not the drama.

Storm at Sea – No Disaster Plan

Symptom: Things will go wrong. When they do, what’s your plan?

The Cure: Expect the best and plan for the worst.

• Years ago, I posted up an Emergency Procedure list in the audio booth. Things like: what to remember or do when a wireless channel fails, a mixing scene freezes, a battery goes out, etc.
• I also provided my own version of product CliffsNotes for the board, amps and other audio/media components. Velcro not included.
• The best pro-action is to have a strategy in place and be ready to employ it. An audio team is working best when it’s solving problems, not creating nor avoiding them.
• Character under pressure is another life preserver. All eyes are watching you. How you handle a stressful situation will help you land in a good place.
• Trust me; no one has ever died as a result of worship service snafus. It may feel that way, but the sun still comes up on Monday. You as the leader or team member are committed to the mission – don’t abandon ship!

Land Ho: Putting Praise in the Praise Team

Symptom: Where is the love?

The Cure: The hallmark of a great service? When no one complains about the sound. A bonus is when people thank each other for their time, effort and goal-focused energy.

• Thank members of the worship team. When’s the last time you did that?
• Another great indicator that the audio and worship team has done their job: the congregation, singers and other participants can hear themselves clearly without any audio difficulties. They too, were able to focus on what is happening service-wise and not the technical errors.
• Think about who the winner is at most meetings. It’s the person who brings the food. Try it. You’ll never lose when you play as a team.

You’ve Got to Serve Somebody

Our technology tools, whether a headset microphone or a digital mixing board, serve the users. The praise band serves the song and the congregation by engaging them in a personal and profound worship experience. The Audio Team serves everyone by delivering great sound. This is one way to honor the Lord who gave us these talents and treasures.

Technically, we can learn all the new tricks on the board, in the mix or at the rig, but the most difficult task requires good old-fashioned people skills.   The pay-off of preparation, leadership, communication, teamwork and careful planning will help you reach the shores of performance paradise.   Make sure you and your people paddle on both sides of the boat; otherwise, you’re just going in circles.

Fast thinking:  Proof that the SM58 can be a vocal mic and an instrument mic – at the same time.

There was a time when a mic failed on stage and the audio team was quick to the rescue. We were running two mics: one for acoustic guitar and one for voice. When my guitar mic failed, I had to maneuver my vocal mic to pick up both my guitar and voice.

Thanks to the trusty Shure SM58^®, all sound levels were saved. Thanks also to the skilled engineer who kept his cool. Just one more reason why the SM58 and the ULX-S/SM58 are my personal go-to mics for worship leading.

About BRANON DEMPSEY: He is the CEO, Founder and Training Director of Worship Team Training® a ministry providing workshops and online resources to over 400 churches across North America.  Branon writes a monthly column for Worship Musician and is a training partner with Yamaha Corporation of America.  For Live Workshops, Online Mentoring and Streaming Education for Worship Teams and Leaders, visit: www.WorshipTeamTraining.com

Whether you believe that God or the Devil is in the details, the fact is that no matter how hard you try to honor one or drive the other away by paying attention to the smallest things, stuff happens.

Our music teachers always taught us to play through mistakes.  But what can you do when you’re a Worship Leader and one sunny morning, you’re faced with an unrelenting series of tech troubles that seem to get in the way of delivering the message?

Meet a man who knows how that feels and what to do about it. His name is Sandy Hoffman and he is serving the worship community at Christ Church Santa Fe. Here’s his story:

“Just about anything that could go wrong during worship did go wrong. The day started out predictably enough. That incredibly blue Santa Fe sky greeted me as I walked out the front door to head for the church. The engine of my fine old Ford fired right up, and for some Sunday-morning worship inspiration, I tuned the car radio to the local black gospel station. Oh, happy day.

How could anything spoil this perfect morning?

As always, we conducted our weekly worship team tech rehearsal on Thursday afternoon. That’s the point in the week when we go through the worship checklist. From batteries to lyric projection, lighting and stage setup, we try to get everything just right before the team shows up for Thursday evening rehearsal.

After making sure that the charts were accurate and available for each worship song in the set, we welcomed the team members as they showed up for “P and P” (prayer and polish). The rehearsal proceeded without a glitch.

Then Sunday came.  Apparently, Worship Gremlins had been hard at work over the weekend.

For Starters

It began during the very first song of the first service. Inexplicably, a middle-aged light bulb in one of our three video projectors died on the spot. (We have since replaced the projectors with flat screens!) The instantaneous blackness of the screen, lit up only moments before with the morning’s first glowing words of praise, jerked the attention of the worshipers from the eternally Divine back into the momentarily mundane. Sometimes it only takes one small stone to start an avalanche.

And Then

Right on the heels of the video bulb debacle came the wireless mic muting mishap, proving how much damage can be caused by one stray index finger on a Mute button. That’s all it took to accidentally render two perfectly new AA batteries useless. This was distraction number two, and it wasn’t diagnosed until the end of the first service.

No Charm the Third Time

When our bass player arrived for the second service that morning, he was greeted by the total re-tweaking of all the settings on his stage amp. Who changed it? Who knows? The Gremlins? He spent the rest of the morning trying to arrive back at that low-frequency sweet spot he had so carefully dialed in at rehearsal just three days before. Distraction number three was in full swing.

But Wait!  There’s More!

It was then that the Gremlins launched their most insidious attack.

It’s our habit to check and replace batteries every Thursday for the following Sunday. This time, what we thought was a brand new 9-volt battery in the internal preamp of my Taylor T5 was actually a used one, just waiting to disrupt worship with a final choke and wheeze of DC output.

This turned my beautifully clear signal into a dynamically distorted distraction. “OK,” I thought, “it’s time for the people out there to meet and greet one another. I’ll just discreetly change the battery while they’re not looking.” I signaled the sound tech to mute my guitar channel, and in seconds I had a brand new 9-volt battery in the T5. “Finally,” I thought, “after a morning of multiple distractions, we’re back on track, ready to lead the people into the Promised Land!”

Coup-de-Grace

Not so fast! Yet one more hurdle remained and this was a good one.

No sooner did we begin the next praise song than we noticed a hideous crackle and spit coming from my guitar channel. Arrggghh! The battery was fine now, but sometime during that short welcome break, the Gremlins had made their final move.

The XLR cable between the guitar direct box and house snake had chosen that moment to cease making a solid connection. For the next 20 minutes or so, there were milliseconds at a time of pure clarity, interspersed with eardrum-wrenching electronic outbursts. My worship leader focus was gone. Demoralized, I grimaced through the remainder of the set, and then slunk off the stage with my head hung low.

The Path of Prevention

We learned that day that not every worship distraction can be avoided. In spite of the technical challenges we faced that day, I actually received one surprisingly wonderful comment from someone who never even noticed any of the worship distractions.

Here are a few suggestions that may not eliminate all of your technical challenges, but if applied, will send your Gremlins a clear message that you’re on the offensive.

1. Regularly replace batteries, strings, bulbs, and anything else that has a short, unpredictable life span. This will help you avoid lots of embarrassment and distractions. Make and stick to a regular, consistent schedule of replacement.

2. Keep consistent records. Keeping a written log of your amp, instrument, and sound reinforcement settings will make it easy to reset them to your favorite sweet spots. Also, remember to keep an eye on how many hours any gear that has its own internal clock has been used. Too many hours can be a warning sign of impending problems. Stay vigilant.

3. Have supplies on hand. Always have extra fresh batteries, cables, bulbs, strings, picks, sticks, and anything else you can think of. You never know when you might need to make a quick switch right in the middle of a worship service. By diminishing the number of potential distractions, we increase the level of focus on the worship experience.

4. Finally, fluidity is the key! I’ve often heard it said, “Be fluid, because flexible is too rigid.” These profound words of wisdom, applied to worship preparation and mixed with faith, will enable us to deal with anything that could possibly go worng— I mean, wrong.”

ABOUT SANDY HOFFMAN:  An accomplished musician, Sandy’s road has taken him from the touring company of “Godspell” in the late 1970s to a 31-year run leading worship. In addition to his role at Christ Church, Sandy is a featured instructor at the Youth with a Mission Schools of Worship and Schools of Music in Missions worldwide.  He writes a regular “Tips for Tight Teams” column for Worship Musician magazine.

Find more stories like this, plus tips and techniques on the art of 21^st century worship in Sandy’s new book from Hal Leonard Publishing.  It’s widely available online as well as on the publisher’s website.

http://www.halleonardbooks.com

Listen to Sandy’s 12-track acoustic guitar recording Sereno on iTunes or visit WorshipTeamWork to order a copy of this inspiring and personal CD.

http://www.worshipteamwork.com

Tim Vear, also a guitar wizard, before Shure’s Annual Holiday Show in 2012.

One of the ways that we zero in on what you want from us is to check in with Senior Applications Engineer and Shure Answer Man Tim Vear.

Not only is he a featured speaker at countless workshops and seminars, he wrote the book on Audio Systems for Houses of Worship which many of you probably have in print or digital form.    This booklet is constantly in update mode, explaining its fifteen versions.  So far.

Tim, who can describe the physical characteristics of wavelengths and make it both understandable and interesting, was the lucky fellow we tapped just a few days before Christmas to share some of your most recent church audio-related questions and concerns.

Here are the top six, not only from his phone, email and online encounters with you at Shure headquarters, but from his recent audio seminars at Worship Arts Technology Summit and other events.

How do I mic the congregation (for recording or broadcast)?

Generally, it’s desirable to have some direct pickup of the congregation to add ambience and energy to a recording or broadcast of your service.

The usual technique is to treat the congregation as a very large choir: place one (or two for stereo) microphone(s) above and somewhat in front of the congregation.

Just as for choir applications, a flat-response, cardioid condenser microphone is recommended. Aim the microphones at the faces of the people and away from the main PA speakers as much as possible.  This will insure that the resulting sound is mostly from the audience and not from the PA.

During a broadcast, the sound from these microphones can be brought into the overall mix at the desired level, typically lower when the pastor or worship leader is speaking and higher for musical sections, particularly when the congregation is singing.  For recording, it’s sometimes useful to record the congregation mic(s) on separate track(s) for sweetening of the final mix.  Note that the congregation mics should NEVER be routed to the main PA mix.

One example of miking the congregation in an auditorium setting to add a pinch of spice to the recording or broadcast mix.

How can I pick up individual congregation members who need to speak?  

If you’re trying to pick up the sound from an individual congregant, it may be possible to use the technique above – but ONLY for recording or broadcast.  Since the congregation mics will usually be at some distance from any individual talker, the engineer will have to bring up the level of the nearest mic to pick up that source. Even then, the sound quality from the distant microphone is likely to be poor.

A better technique is to bring a microphone (usually wireless) close the individual. This requires a microphone “wrangler” (and sometimes multiple microphones) to get the mic into position quickly.  Just as for other close-up vocal applications, a shaped-response, cardioid microphone is recommended.  If you plan to amplify the congregant in the main PA, then ONLY the close mic technique will work.  A distant microphone (greater than a couple of feet away) cannot achieve usable gain-before-feedback when it’s amplified through the main PA system.

Headset mics like the Countryman WCE6 place the mic within
inches of the speaker’s mouth

Why doesn’t the pulpit microphone sound the same as a lapel or headset microphone?

The reason that these microphones have different sound qualities is almost completely dependent on the distance from the microphone to the mouth of the talker.  The closer the microphone, the better the signal-to-noise ratio, the better the gain-before feedback, and the better the low-frequency response (for directional microphones).

The signal-to-noise is improved because the level of the voice increases by 6dB each time the mic-to-mouth distance is cut in half while the background noise stays constant.  The gain-before-feedback is improved in a similar manner, resulting in either higher level with the same feedback potential or the same level with lower feedback potential.  The low-frequency response is improved because the closer placement increases proximity effect for a directional microphone.  Overall, a close microphone placement will give significantly better performance, particularly in live-sound applications.

Is it safe to use a wireless microphone in a baptistry?

Sometimes there’s a need to use a microphone in a “wet” environment such as a full-immersion baptistry.  Although a properly grounded sound system and baptistry installation should be safe even for use with a wired microphone, a wireless microphone eliminates any possibility of a ground-fault that might be hazardous to the wearer.

The only suggestion would be to protect the microphone and/or transmitter electronics from direct contact with water as much as possible.  Such contact is not dangerous, but the microphone (particularly a condenser type) and/or the transmitter may stop working if water intrudes into the mic element or the electronics.  There are waterproof pouches and even waterproof microphones that can be used in this case.

Can I use rechargeable batteries in my wireless systems?

Rechargeable batteries can be cost effective and environmentally friendly alternatives to single use devices.  The principle considerations are the operating voltage, the run-time, and ultimate lifetime capability of the rechargeable.  Here’s how the different types of rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries compare. 

The table above gives typical capacities of popular 9V batteries.

The table above gives typical capacities of popular AA batteries.

These characteristics depend on the specific chemistry of the battery.  For transmitters that use AA batteries, both nickel-metal-hydride (Ni-MH) and nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) types may be suitable.  Though they have somewhat lower operating voltage than alkaline types (1.2 V vs. 1.5 V) their run-times are fairly similar.  However, for 9-volt size applications, the run-times are much less than with the equivalent alkaline.  For this reason, we suggest using a Lithium-polymer (Li-Polymer) chemistry.  This battery has an operating voltage and run-time similar to an alkaline 9-volt type.  Note that the Li-polymer chemistry is not available in AA size cells.  Any of these batteries should be used only with their specific chargers and operated with regard to manufacturers suggestions in order to get the maximum life.

A properly maintained rechargeable should be capable of up to 500 charge/use cycles.

Are directional antennas always the best choice for my receivers?

Shure UA874 directional antenna – antennae like these can be stand-mounted, wall-mounted or suspended.

Directional antennas are usually recommended for specific applications only.  These include operation over long transmission distances (greater than 150 feet) and/or operation in the presence of localized interference sources.

Directional antennas typically exhibit increased sensitivity in one direction and less sensitivity in other directions.  The most common directional antenna is the log-periodic type, often called a “paddle” antenna because of its shape.  In the direction of increased sensitivity, the antenna can deliver a stronger signal to the receiver, which can increase the effective range of the system.  At the same time, the antenna can offer some rejection of interfering signals coming from other directions.

However, most directional antennas are wideband devices.  They are equally sensitive to all frequencies in their operating band.  This means that a directional antenna aimed at an interfering source will increase the level of that interference as well as whatever desired signal may be in that same direction.  Finally, too much antenna sensitivity (gain) may result in overload of the connected receivers.  This can aggravate intermodulation and actually desensitize the receiver.  For most applications omnidirectional antennas are still the norm.

Download the current edition of Audio Systems Guide for Houses of Worship right here.

Anyone leading a praise or worship team in a small or mid-size church has faced the challenges of an all-volunteer tech team.  Many are called but few can face the fearsomeness of an intimidating soundboard or the possibility of the vocalist’s mic dropping out mid-solo – especially without a background in pro sound.

Here Allen Sargent, a 20-year praise team leader, who is currently Discipleship Coordinator at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Fallbrook, California, shares his tips for striking the right chord with newbies by keeping it real …simple.

As a leader in a mid-size church, I’ve found that volunteers are the most important resource, since there is rarely a paid staff member either in the band or running sound and video. Occasionally a trained person appears, but most commonly, the Worship Leader selects the music, leads the band, trains the audio and visual team, and is primarily responsible to repair or upgrade all equipment as required.

Volunteer recruitment is an ongoing project at all levels. Turnover in the audio/visual area can be high because it is the most thankless and pressure filled job on Sundays. No one will ever tell that audio person “Great work today, no feedback and all your levels were perfectly mixed and EQ’d just right!” No one will ever tell that video person “Wow, your lyric screens were not only accurate, but perfectly displayed right when we needed them!” No, quite the opposite! The only time an audio/visual person gets attention is when something is not working. It feels like everyone in the building has turned around and is staring. So, as the sweat rolls off the brow and seconds seem like hours, the Worship Leader is not just praying that a problem is fixed, but that the audio or visual volunteer will not quit after this day! It’s true.

All Worship Leaders agree that the very best sound person is a musician – and that’s why professional sound engineers often began their careers playing in a band. Band experience helps them set the right levels for the monitors and the room.

The average mid-size church is commonly be lacking in available sound volunteers with any experience. Even most reasonably-experienced people at our church rarely dive into technical aspects of what they do (comparing models, analyzing sound patterns, etc.). Also, there may be only one or two trained individuals in the church, and frequently I have had to place a last-minute saintly “sucker” in front of the soundboard – someone who is completely overwhelmed by the number of buttons and knobs. For that reason, and due to the real pressure and thanklessness of the task, and because of the lack of experienced individuals, I strive to find solutions that are simple. This is what I call Stupid Simple.

This is not a put-down, but really matching the volunteer’s time and training level to that which equals the task required. How does a complete novice figure out which end of the XLR cord to plug into the mic? Or why does this 1/4″ jack not fit into any of the slots on the snake? Where’s the “on” button? If everything is on, how come I still can’t hear anything? I thought you said our sound system plays CDs?

Experience has taught me this, and many are the times I have driven to the church before a wedding or funeral service (“that didn’t require a sound person”) to answer these questions and quell the hysteria – sometimes to unpress the mute button, sometimes to turn on the amp because someone (but who?) turned off each component separately instead of using the main power switch!

I have learned that instructions requiring more than three steps are too confusing. Instructions that do not include pictures may be ignored. And if directions are not visually obvious, or stated in everyday, non-technical language, the hapless volunteer will become easily and quickly confused.

Tips for Keeping It Basic

As stated: keep it simple.
Leave simple instructions at the board at all times.

Color-code your vocal mics and cords to match a specific channel on the board. Channel 5 is red. The mic has a red cover, the cord has a band of red tape at each end with the number 5 clearly marked, and the channel has a piece of red tape at the bottom of the slider. I try to use all the same Beta 58 mics and Monster^® cables (for reliability and the replacement value). Cheap mics and cords that host a variety of mic styles will only confuse people.

When training someone new on the board, always overlap. A trained person will sit with the newbie during Sunday (and at rehearsal when it is possible, which it is frequently NOT).

Introduce one channel at a time, NEVER touch the EQ buttons, DO NOT use headphones but walk around the room to listen in corners, sides, front, middle and back. I encourage the sound person to stand on stage (when possible) to listen to what the band is hearing. I challenge the sound person to pick out each instrument and each voice in the mix, but that is a higher skill that will take time (I know, isn’t that the job of a sound person?

In our church, sometimes it’s good enough to have the person simply turn on the system, leave the levels where I have positioned them unless there’s an obvious correction required, and to make sure any muted channel is unmuted when it’s time to do so. Mixing a great blend is the added whipped cream. Having NO feedback today because someone is NOT playing with channel sound levels can be the cherry on top!) The reality of unskilled audio people managing sound during a service is all too common.

There are two ways to avoid dropouts:

1. Training is helpful – but experience is the best teacher. If someone feels the heat of a live issue, they’re more likely to take corrective action or know how to handle a situation next time (assuming they don’t quit).

2. Avoid distractions - having a ‘friend’ sitting at the board with them can be trouble; I encourage a sound person to sit by himself or herself in front of the board.

Twenty years of experience leading the charge each Sunday environment have told me that technical specifications are like binary code to a computer user – the sound person thinks “someone has to understand all this, but all I want to do is get this done without making myself look or feel like a fool”.

Always remember that volunteers have a lot of responsibility and pressure thrust upon them and very little time to learn the skills required for the job. Phone apps (thank companies like Apple) are written to be very user-friendly and don’t require programming skills to use them. Church audio needs to take a page from that playbook – and be simplified to a level so anyone can hit the switch and make it work.

About Allen Sargent: He has led praise teams for over 20 years, managing sound, volunteer recruitment and training in small and mid-size congregations.   He has also been musical director for a private K-8 Christian school, writing and directing Christmas and spring musicals. Allen enjoys working with worship teams in different congregations and leads special event teams comprised of musicians from a variety of churches.  He’ll be returning to Camp Pendleton in Santa Fe this December to lead a rock band for the annual Santa Fly-In Christmas Family Day where the elves, according to Allen, are “pretty darn tough-looking”.

Now in its fifth year of bringing technical expertise to those who work and volunteer in houses of worship, summit sponsors Shure, Yamaha, Elation Lighting and Renewed Vision are once again underwriting the cost of the two-day conference in three locations throughout 2012 so that as many church worship teams as possible can attend.

At just $149 for an intensive-two day workshop, you and your staff can get hands-on training from top tech engineers and world class musicians who have worked with an impressive line-up of artists, including Chris Tomlin, Paul Baloche, Twila Paris, Amy Grant, Israel Houghton, Matt Redman, Don Moen, Michael W. Smith, Leeland, Ron Kenoly, Tommy Walker and many others.  Shure’s Senior Applications Engineer Tim Vear (who authored “Audio Systems Guide for Houses of Worship”) will be on hand to lead sessions on mics and wireless systems.

You’ll find yourself at the controls of top-quality gear, applying what you’ve learned to the situations you face in your church, all under the guidance of world-class experts who have extensive teaching experience. All skill levels are welcome and training will be presented in structured tracks, allowing you and your staff to begin with the basics and build on your knowledge with a series of increasingly advanced class offerings.

Meals and lodging are available onsite at nominal charges and group discounts also apply. In-depth two-day tracks will include Audio, Musician, Media, Lighting and Vocal. One-day Bootcamps for Audio and Media basics are offered, too.

Here’s the schedule for the Dallas, TX event:

First Baptist Dallas

Bootcamp:  October 25, 2012

Conference:  October 26–27, 2012

Find out more about WATS or register at www.gotowats.com

You’ve done everything you can think of to keep the levels constant.  You’ve added amps.  You‘ve moved speakers.  Still, the amount of reverberation in your worship space makes intelligibility a real challenge. Then, of course, there’s background noise and feedback.  Believe it or not, there may be a simple solution to combating these sound quality issues.  Three letters. DSP.

Whether audience members are in a theatre, an auditorium, or a church like yours, they have high expectations about sound quality. So if you’re curious about the ability of DSPs to provide the remedy, read on. We’ll cover some of the basics:

• DSP – Digital Signal Processing
• Signs and Symptoms: When It Can Help
• Types of DSPs
• Practical Applications

In this blogpost, Shure’s Gino Sigismondi is here to tell us what Digital Signal Processors can and can’t do. We also recruited expert Jim Brown of Audio Systems Group to share his vast real world experiences.

How They Work

Digital Signal Processing converts signals from real world sources (usually in analog form) into digital data that can then be analyzed. Analysis is performed in digital form because once a signal has been reduced to numbers, its components can be isolated and manipulated in more detail than in analog form.

When the DSP has finished its work, the digital data can be turned back into an analog signal with improved quality. A DSP can filter noise from a signal, amplify frequencies and suppress others.

Types of Audio Signal Processors

Signal processors can be analog or digital, single- or multi-function or integrated with other components in a sound system.  In their infancy, most were standalone devices, but over time, became multi-functional with today’s digital signal processors (DSPs) combining a wide spectrum of functions at a fraction of the cost of individual processors.

Here are some of the problem-solving features you’ll find in DSPs today:

Volume and Gain Control
Filters
Equalization
Dynamics Processor
Compressors
Limiters
Expanders and Noise Gates
Automatic Gain Control (Speech Leveler)
Delay
Automatic Microphone Mixers
Gated Automatic Mixers
Feedback Reducers
Acoustic Echo Cancellers

It is highly sophisticated chip technology, but you can find it everywhere. DSP chips are used in sound cards, fax machines, modems, cellular phones, high-capacity hard disks and digital TVs. According to Texas Instruments, DSPs are used as the engine in 70% of the world’s digital cellular phones, and with the increase in wireless applications, this number will only increase. Digital signal processing is used in many fields including biomedicine, sonar, radar, seismology, speech and music processing, imaging and communications.

What DSP Can Do

To determine whether DSP can benefit your sound system, you need to consider some of the most common problems you face in sound reinforcement.  Assuming you have fairly good room acoustics, here are the problems and the DSP tools that can remedy them.

Shure DFR22 Audio Processor

And What DSP Can’t Do

Adding DSP to your system isn’t a substitute for following accepted sound reinforcement rules.  Reverberation, for instance, can’t be fixed by audio processing.  Once sound energy is released by the loudspeaker, DSP has no effect.  Raising the level of the sound system will only make the problem worse.

Helpful Tips

• Keep unwanted sounds from entering open microphones.
(One way to do this is to make sure your microphone have the correct polar pattern for your application.)
• Turn off microphones that aren’t in use.
• Keep microphones close to the sound source
• Aim directional loudspeakers away from reflective surfaces and toward listeners.
• Reduce room reverberation through structural modifications or acoustic treatments.

Then, We Asked an Expert

Jim Brown, Audio Systems Group

To gain another perspective, we contacted Jim Brown, who is the founder and principal consultant for Audio Systems Group in Chicago. He has published numerous research papers on sound reinforcement and is a contributor to pro sound magazines, including Sound & Video Contractor and Technologies for Worship.

He’s designed hundreds of sound systems for a wide variety of installations and started using DSP in 1995.  Jim hasn’t done a system without one since and here’s why:

Flexibility
“One piece of equipment, often taking up no more than one or two units of rack space, can fulfill my wildest dreams.”

More Capabilities
“I can do a lot more signal processing that I could with separate analog gear.  There’s no longer any excuse for not tuning the send to the ceiling loudspeakers and it’s easy for me to delay them so that they don’t create an intelligibility problem.”

Programming Ease
“For instance, the user interface for an equalizer looks and feels just like the controls of the analog unit it replaces.  I have a real time display of the equalizer’s response as I tune it.  The compressors and limiters give me control of all the setup parameters, showing gain reduction dynamically with signal.”

Documentation and Backup
“I can save the file to my laptop when I’m done.  I can also save different variations.”

Portability
“I can work through a design in my office, understand the free DSP and I/O available for expansion of the system – all without the need to have any contact with the hardware itself.”

Scalability
“Things like “Oh, by the way, you know we need to feed the system from the portable baptismal font that we set up at the back of the church, don’t you?” are easily accommodated.”

Pre-sets
“I can create customized pre-sets and call them up with external control signals in the form of switched contacts, logic signals and user control screens.  This is perfect for churches with a variety of worship services and programs.”

Reduced Noise in the Signal Chain
“Before DSP, we had to worry about the cascading of noise contributed by each and every analog input and output stage.”

Simplified Installation
“With DSP, all we have to do is connect inputs and outputs.  The rest of the wiring all happens on the computer screen.”

Cost
“Installation costs are minimal and hardware costs are much less, too. If we add the costs of a compressor/limiter, equalizer, crossover and delay, we’re even with the cost of a simple DSP that replaces them.   Since the DSP can be used anywhere, the more applications you can find for it, the more you save.”

___________________________________________________________

Want more information?

Selection and Operation of Audio Signal Processors

Audio Signal Processor FAQs

And if you’d like to learn more about Jim Brown, and the range of his talents, which extend from producing NPR’s “Jazz Alive!” to his 4 1/2 star review in Downbeat for his “Carmen McRae at Ratso’s” CD visit Audio Systems Group .

Worship Technology Solutions, Markey’s Rental and Staging

“The point is this: good sound is good sound. A church building is really a performance space, and all of the rules of sound reinforcement apply.”    

Josh Isenhart is a freelance audio engineer and consultant for church technical ministries.  Having sat through many a budget discussion, we knew he’d have some sound opinions about building a solid system to share with our readers. This is what he had to say.

1. Old Isn’t Necessarily Bad
Before you start drafting that shopping list, take the time to assess the equipment you have on hand.  Just because it’s old, it doesn’t mean it isn’t serviceable.  (Think of all the consumers who trashed their tube amplifiers for solid-state stereos thirty years ago only to find audiophiles preferring that warm sound later.)

Examine your gear.  Is it worth repairing?  Can it be repurposed?  Is there another ministry that can use it?

2. Look at Backbone Issues
Scrutinize the system that’s in place and deconstruct it, link by link:

Speaker selection and placement

• Do you have the correct kind and number of speakers?
• Are they installed properly?
• Do they adequately cover the space?

Power

• Is there sufficient power for the number of speakers in place?
• Are the amplifiers properly installed, with good ventilation and appropriate A.C. power?

Mix Position

• Is the soundboard in a location that allows the operator to properly hear what is going on in the room?
• Is there enough physical space for all of the equipment and the personnel required?

Wiring

• Has the system been wired in a neat, logical manner?
• Were block diagrams and wiring layouts created during installation?
• Can any competent technician walk in and repair the system – or – is it only understood by the person who has been running it for the last 30 years?

3.  Evaluate your current needs. Then, develop a 3-to-5 Year Plan
The best investment you can make is an investment of your time in developing a strategic plan that is based on the present and future needs of your church.  The best sound systems are built on a foundation of communication – with your church’s leaders, administrators (for instance, the budget committee) and the worship staff.

• Determine short-term goals.  What do you want to be doing differently by the end of the year?
• Examine your long-term goals and begin developing the necessary system over time.
• Establish a budget for maintenance, upgrades and training.   Systems and individual components don’t represent one-time purchases.  (When your church budgets for new computer systems, for example, it’s always with the understanding that the network and the workstations will need to be upgraded on a consistent basis.)

4. Buy smart, not cheap.
You get what you pay for.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.     You’ve heard it all before, but it’s still true.  Good equipment costs money.

Don’t buy anything – cords, cables, mics, speakers, mixing boards, really anything in your system – on the basis of low price.  Buy it because you believe it will perform the task most effectively and reliably.  There’s a lot of product experience out there.  Talk to colleagues at other churches, read any number of publications designed exclusively for church and production technology, attend seminars and workshops.

Once you understand exactly what you need and which product is most likely to fulfill it, you’ll be ready to start shopping.

5. Think Visual.
Church AV is no longer a luxury.  As you think about retrofitting a tired system or installing a new one, think about how you will be integrating screens, projectors and the whole pantheon of multimedia.  The size of the congregation is no longer the tipping point here – it’s the impact of the message on a community raised on fast-moving images.

Now, How Much Should You Pay

It’s not the eternal question but it’s still a big one: How much should you budget for a sound system?

There is no simple answer to this question. You need to take the time to evaluate all of your ministry’s goals. A good place to start is to base you budget on the number of people sitting in the seats, for instance:

Number of Seats                                                           Budget

200-300                                                                         $10,000-$15,000

300-500                                                                         $15,000-$20,000

500-1,000                                                                      $40,000-$80,000

1,000-5,000                                                                   $60,000-$100,000

Over 5,000                                                                     $100,000+

Budget-Saving Tips from Josh: How to Control P.A. Costs

Here are Josh’s tips for optimizing quality and budget control:

• Don’t be afraid to try new things.
• It’s OK to buy used.
• Cover your basic needs and worry about bells and whistles later.
• Don’t get sold.  Arm yourself with the facts.
• Look for packages.  Some companies will reduce their prices based on a bundle of gear.
• Build relationships with local dealers, contractors and repair shops.
• Don’t skimp on anything, especially the soundboard, speakers and amplification.
• Get durable, all-purpose microphones.

“I rely heavily on Shure microphones. Not because they’re affordable, but because they are some of the most reliable products on the market. If you’re starting out with a small budget, buy as many SM57s and Beta 58s as you can. You can use them for anything and they last forever.

Regardless of whether you’re a church of 20,000 or a church of 200, look seriously at the entire Shure line. Having toured and recorded with wireless systems that cost far more, I can tell you in all honesty that nothing sounds as good or is as rock solid as Shure wireless systems.”

Thanks to Josh Isenhart for sharing his approach to tackling a seemingly overwhelming task.  To contact Josh, email him at: j3isenhart@gmail.com.

We tend to think of him as “friend of Shure Notes John” but to the larger audio world, he is FOH engineer extraordinaire, audio tech advisor in his popular TechTraining101 site, frequent contributor to Worship Musician plus pro on the bus and at the board with this summer’s Brothers of the Sun tour featuring Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. 

We’ve been turning to John for practical advice on everything from critical listening to mixing tips for many years now, so when we decided to tackle the topic of tape ministry recording, we didn’t have to look very far.  We tracked him down in cyberspace ‑ somewhere between Paradise Island and Tampa ‑ at crunch time: the start of a 25-city tour.

Before we get to actual recording, let’s touch on a subject that’s rarely mentioned. Recording rights.

“Any time you press record on an audio or video device, you need to make sure you have the rights to record the music. Recording the Pastor’s sermon is perfectly fine because technically he is the copyright owner of his sermon. Music is another story entirely.

If your worship team is singing another worship leader’s song, or a classic hymn for that matter, you can pretty much count on the fact that there are restrictions to pressing that big red record button.  Even if your church isn’t producing CDs to make a profit, the rights aren’t as hard to understand as you might think. For a thorough understanding, you can find detailed information at these websites like these.”

Christian Copyright License International

Music Services Organization

Now that we’ve covered the fact that you really DO need to have the rights to record, let’s talk about actually pressing the RECORD button. 

“Many churches simply hook up the tape recorder to the left/right output of the soundboard. That, as I’m sure your readers are aware, is going to sound pretty bad from a mix perspective.

What is coming straight off the board is often very unbalanced for the recording. It sounds great in the room because you’re hearing the trumpets fine without having a mic on them, but the recording is suffering because it doesn’t ‘hear’ the horn section, or whatever instrument(s) you choose not to mic. “

Many of our Shure Notes readers volunteer or work part-time in churches that don’t have mega-church budgets.  What advice do you have for them?

“Here are some No Budget tips:

• Put a mic on anything you’re not satisfied with on the tape. I can hear the folks in the front row now … “We don’t need microphones on the drums, they’re already too loud.” Tip two will answer that complaint.
• Set up your recording device to take a feed from a pre fader auxiliary send. This will allow the FOH engineer to mix what is needed in the house, while having a completely separate mix for the tape. Yes, this does mean a little more work, but it will give you the ability to mix things differently for the tape.  Make sure your aux sends mutes when you engage the mute on the main channel.  If not, you’ll have stuff going to tape that you really don’t want there.

For those folks in the front row concerned with the volume, tell them not to worry; those mics are just for recording. If you put those extra “recording” mics on pre fader aux sends, you don’t even have to push up the fader for that channel. So if they’re really concerned with the volume, take them to the board and show them that the drum mics aren’t even on in the house.”

OK, what if you have some money to spend?

“A really neat trick on the last install I did was to use a separate Aviom system for the recording.  If you’re having trouble with monitors and recording services, this may be the way to go. We installed an Aviom system (www.aviom.com) for the band to run their own monitors. Then we took an extra control surface to a room just behind the stage. We hooked up the output of the Aviom to the input of the tape deck and monitored it through a set of computer speakers. This gave them the ability to have a pseudo-recording room for a pretty reasonable budget.”

Let’s take a flight of fancy and assume that money is no object.

“If you are really serious about recording music the best way possible, you’ll need a separate engineer in an isolated room with a separate console. It’s really the best way to get amazing mixes.”

We know that not every house of worship has a professional staff.  What’s your advice for the church with a semi-pro crew?

 “Any mix is only going to be as good as the sound person behind the board. If you have only one good audio tech, I wouldn’t spend $100K on a separate recording room. I’d spend my money on educating some of the other audio volunteers. I’ve heard mixes from the simplest of setups that blew away the recordings done by multi-thousand dollar remote recording rooms, because they had a better sound person.”

What separates good recordings from great ones?

“The biggest key to a good recording is making it sound like you were there.

Start with a good, clean, balanced mix of all the instruments. It’s not uncommon in a smaller building to have six or more additional mics on instruments that aren’t even going to the house speakers. They’re just for the recording setup that I described before.

Now that you’ve built a good mix with whatever system you’re using, here are some additional suggestions:

1. A mix straight off the board will never sound completely live because it is getting a tight sound directly from the instruments. You need to add back in some ambience with audience and/or ambience mics. Remember, audience mics are a spice: add too much and it sounds unnatural. Get a good mix of the instruments first and then add in just enough audience so that listeners know that they’re there. I usually start my recording with the audience mics considerably back in the mix. I wait until the middle or end of the first song to decide how much I need. That gives me a few minutes to make the mix as clean as possible before adding the spice.
2. Also of note it’s best to EQ out as much of the low frequencies as possible in these mics.  If I have a variable High Pass filter on my soundboard, I may set it as high as 200Hz.  If you only have a button, engage that, and then take your low frequency shelf filter all the way down.  This lets the warmth of your dry mix come through without muddying it up with a bunch of low mush that the ambient/audience mics are picking up.
3. If you have a stereo aux send then definitely do the mix in stereo and feel free to pan stuff around. Your brain loves to hear things with space in between and around it and stereo audience mics are always going to sound more real. They really add a sense of dimension to the mix.  If you have a little more budget available, the Shure VP88 is one of my favorite stereo mics. Either way, when you add more than one audience mic to the mix be sure to pan the hard left and right so that the listener gets that natural sense of space. “

Final thoughts?

“Live worship recording is an art and a science. It begins with a celebration of faith – the goal is capturing that experience in a form that can be share with the world.”

About John Mills:  John is a 20-year veteran of live sound. He’s toured with some of the biggest names in Christian music – Chris Tomlin, Shane and Shane, Lincoln Brewster and Paul Baloche and is currently on a summer tour with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw.  John writes regularly for Worship Musician and is a great resource for church tech teams with helpful advice on his TechTraining101.com website.  We’re also crazy about John because he says things like this: “I don’t want to turn around one day and look to see what I’ve accomplished in my life and realize that it was only running good sound at this or that concert. I remember promising God when I first started that if he allowed me to use my talents at this, I would be faithful to share that knowledge.”

• Houses of Worship
• Teleconferencing
• Videoconferencing
• Panel Discussions
• Boardrooms
• Distance Learning
• Hotel Sound
• Courtrooms

Microphone mixers, also known as voice-activated or sound-activated microphone mixers, have one fundamental function: to attenuate (or reduce in level) any microphone that is not being addressed, and conversely, to rapidly activate any microphone that is addressed by a talker. In general, any speech sound reinforcement system that uses four or more microphones should include an automatic mixer.

With too few open mics, some talkers sound clear, while others seem far away.  With too many open mics, there is a greater likelihood of feedback and too much background noise is added, making it hard for talkers to be heard clearly. And often, a talker’s voice will be picked up by more than one microphone, resulting in poor audio quality.

All audio systems face the same problems whenever multiple open microphones are needed:

• Build-up of background noise and reverberation
• Reduced gain before feedback
• Comb filtering

These problems can plague boardrooms, city council chambers, conference centers, churches, teleconferencing rooms, talk shows, anywhere multiple microphones are used. Since audio quality rapidly deteriorates as the number of open microphones increases, the solution is to keep the minimum number of microphones open that will handle the audio.  Automatic mixers address these concerns by opening mics as soon as they are needed and attenuating them when they are not in use.

Allan Soifer in Sound & Video Contractor provides the back-story: “The need for many mics to be active at once was first perceived by those A/V contractors who serviced government legislative chambers, city council halls, hotel function rooms, and so on. The common problem with trying to operate and control the levels on even six mics is obvious to anyone who has attempted it — one never has enough hands nor is quite fast enough to really ride herd on levels. If one turns all the mics on, both feedback and excessive background noise can occur.”

Let’s revisit the potential issues caused by multiple open mics and how automatic mixers address them:

The first problem of multiple open microphones is the excessive pickup of background noise, which adversely affects the audio quality of the sound system.

Here’s an example:

Consider a city council meeting with eight members and eight microphones. Only one member is talking at a time. If all eight microphones are open when only one microphone is needed, the audio output will contain the background noise and reverberation of all eight microphones.

This means the audio signal will contain substantially more background noise and reverberation than if only the talker’s microphone was open. Speech clarity and intelligibility always suffer as background noise and reverberation increase. In this example, the audio output of eight open microphones would contain 9 dB more background noise and reverberation than a single open microphone. To the human ear, the noise would sound roughly twice as loud when all eight microphones were open.

In addition to only activating microphones that are being addressed, an automatic mixer uses a NOMA (Number of Open Microphones Attenuator) circuit, or equivalent, to help minimize the build-up of background noise and reverberation. This circuit proportionally reduces the overall output of the mixer whenever the number of open microphones increases. A well-designed automatic mixer maintains a consistent level of background noise and reverberation, regardless of how many or how few microphones are active.

The NOMA circuit also plays a major role in controlling the second major problem with multiple open microphones, reduced gain-before-feedback. Acoustic feedback, characterized by an obnoxious howling or screeching sound, can be a problem with any sound system using microphones. Most sound systems are operated below the point where feedback occurs. The margin for stable (feedback-free) operation reduces every time another microphone is opened.

Comb filtering is phase cancellation that occurs when a single sound source is picked up by more than one microphone at different distances from the source, and those signals are combined at the mixer.

Since sound travels at a finite speed, the resultant frequency response of the combined microphone signals is considerably different from that of a single microphone. The frequency response chart of the combined signals resembles the teeth of a hair comb, thus the name. The aural result sounds hollow, diffuse, and thin. An automatic mixer significantly reduces comb filtering by keeping the number of open microphones to an absolute minimum. Certain models of automatic mixers further reduce comb filtering by employing a circuit that will only allow one microphone to turn on for a given sound source.

Selecting a Microphone Mixer

There are dozens of automatic mic mixers on the market.  Expert Soifer (S&VC) suggests you look for features like these:

• Ability to discriminate between speech and ambient noise
• Quick, seamless microphone activation
• Automatically adaptive threshold
• Automatic level adjustment based on the number of active microphones
• Ability to override automatic functions on individual channels as required
• Ability to expand with the needs of the facility.

Shure offers two automatic mixers: SCM810 and SCM410. They are networkable, configurable, and as simple to connect as opening the box, plugging in and connecting the microphones.  They both work with all professional wired and wireless microphones for seamless automatic mixing right out of the box.

What to Remember: Automatic Microphone Mixers

The primary function of an automatic mixer is to keep unused microphones turned off and to instantaneously activate microphones when needed.

• The application is speech
• Using an automatic mixer will: improve gain before feedback, reduce audio degradation caused by superfluous open microphones, and control the build-up of background noise
• Keeping the number of open microphones to a minimum always improves overall audio and quality
• The additional control circuitry on automatic mixers can provide a variety of additional functions: audio privacy switches, chairperson control of all microphones, illuminated indicators of microphone status, and automatic video camera selection based on microphone activation

Need more information?  Visit www.shure.com

The guitarist, in order to hear himself better, turns his amplifier up. The singers need more monitor level to compete with the rest of the praise band. The cycle of escalating stage volume begins again – reducing the overall sound quality and worship experience, especially in a high-ceilinged, hard surface environment designed for choirs and acoustic instruments.

An article in Millimeter quoted worship leader Craig Sibley as saying “Stage volumes in churches have gotten out of control. In church, suddenly you have a heavy metal concert going on. People are literally leaving the church because of the volume. The minute you introduce drums, the guitarist turns up his volume so he can hear himself, then the vocalist needs more volume. Next thing you know, it’s volume wars, with unfortunate impacts on worshippers.”

Today’s systems are far more advanced and far less expensive than those appearing on stages and in sanctuaries just a few years ago. But if you lack the luxury of a professional sound crew that includes a FOH engineer and a monitor engineer and more likely, rely on a resourceful staff of sound vets and volunteers, we can guide you through some of the basics and help you identify a system for your church.

Who will benefit from a personal monitor?

Personal monitors are not just for vocalists. Drummers with personal monitors tend to play quieter. When the loudest instrument onstage gets quieter, everything else can follow suit.  Some churches take this a step further by using electronic drums that create little, if any, acoustic noise.

Bass, keyboard, and electric guitar can also be taken directly into the mixer if the players are using personal monitors, eliminating the need for onstage amplifiers. The end result is a cleaner, more controlled congregation mix.

Many other uses are possible for personal monitors. Choir directors use them for cues, or to hear the pastor more clearly.

The isolation provided by personal monitors can be of great benefit to organists, especially when they are located at the opposite end of the sanctuary from the choir.  Timing can be problematic due to the often-lengthy delay times caused by this separation. If the choir microphones are fed into a personal monitor system worn by the organist, the time delay is eliminated, and the organist is able to keep in sync with the choir.

For pastors who want a monitor, in-ears are also a viable option. Lavalier and gooseneck microphones are especially prone to feedback issues with a floor monitor due to their increased sensitivity and greater distance from the sound source. A personal monitor eliminated those concerns.

Is wireless necessary or will a hardwired system serve your needs?

Personal monitor systems come in two basic varieties – wireless or hardwired.

A hardwired system requires the performer be tethered to a cable, which is not necessarily a negative. Drummers and keyboard players, who remain stationary, or even back-up singers, can take advantage of the lower cost and greater simplicity of a hardwired personal monitor system.

Advantage: Hardwired systems also work worldwide without the hassle of finding clear frequencies or dealing with frequency coordination  with wireless microphone or intercom systems. And if several performers require the same mix, hardwired systems can be daisy-chained together without experiencing significant signal loss, if the input impedance is sufficiently high to allow multiple systems to be connected to a single output with Y-cables.

Wireless equipment requires special consideration and attention to detail.  But the advantages many times outweigh the increased cost and complexity.

Advantage: One of the main benefits of personal monitors is a consistent mix no matter where you stand; going wireless allows you to exploit this advantage to its fullest extent. And when several performers require the same mix, hooking them up is even easier. You can use as many wireless receivers as you need to monitor the same mix with no adverse effects. Plus, there aren’t any cables to trip on!

How many mixes do you need?

The answer to this question depends on how many people are in your band, and their ability to agree upon what they want to hear in the monitors.

One Mix for All In a perfect world, everyone wants to listen to the same mix, so the answer to this question is: one mix. Of course this defeats the primary benefit of “personal” monitors (each performer hearing himself).

Vocals and Instruments An inexpensive configuration uses two mixes; one consisting of vocals, the other of instruments. Using a system that features dual-mono operation, the performers individually choose how much of each mix they wish to hear (see Figure 1). This is a cost-effective way to get into personal monitors, but it still requires a fairly good degree of cooperation among band members.

Drummer Separate Another scenario gives the drummer a separate mix (Figure 2 below). This option works well for two reasons: Drummers, in general, want to hear considerably more drums in the monitors than other band members, and drums can be heard acoustically, especially in bands that perform on small stages. Drums may not even be necessary in the other mixes.

The “More Me” Syndrome We’re assuming that the vocalists are able to agree on a mix of the vocal microphones. While forcing singers to share the same mix encourages a good vocal “blend”, this theory often falls apart in practice.

Separating out the lead vocalist to an individual mix will address this issue. Here’s how to accomplish it in three mixes:

Place some of the backup vocal mics in the “instruments” mix, and adjust the “vocal” mix to satisfy the lead singer, even if that means adding some instruments to the “vocal” mix. This provides:

•  An individual mix for the lead singer

•  A mix for the guitarist and keyboardist that includes their vocals, and

•  A drum mix (The bass player can drop in here, too)

How many mixes are available from your front of house console?

Monitor mixes are typically created using auxiliary (AUX) sends from a mixer, either the front-of-house console or a dedicated monitor console.

A typical small-format console will have at least four auxiliary sends. Whether or not all these are all available for monitors is another matter. AUX sends are also used for effects.  Available sends are the final determinate for the number of possible monitor mixes.

If your answer to our first question (How Many Mixes?) is greater than the answer to this question (How Many Mixes Are Available from the Front of House Console?), you have two options:

Stereo or mono?

Most personal monitor systems allow for monitoring in either stereo or mono. At first glance, stereo may seem the obvious choice, since we hear in stereo, and everything else these days features stereo sound.

Stereo requires two channels of audio. What this means for personal monitor users is two sends are required to create a stereo monitor mix – twice as many as it takes to do a mono mix (see Figure 3). Stereo monitoring can quickly devour auxiliary sends.  If your mixer only has four sends, you can only create two stereo mixes.

While not quite as “realistic” as stereo monitoring, mono allows more mixes from a smaller mixing console – and sometimes fewer transmitters. If you only need one mono mix, these mono-only systems can save you money.

Some stereo transmitters can be operated in a “dual-mono” mode, which provides two mono mixes instead of one stereo. This can be a great way to save money. If you only need one mono mix, these mono-only systems can save you money.

How many components will you need?

After you have answered these questions, plug the numbers into the following equations to determine exactly how many of each component you will need.

Good earphones are an essential component

The key to successful personal monitoring lies in the quality of the earphones. All the premium components in the monitoring signal path will be rendered ineffective by a low quality earphone.  There are three types:

Earbuds While inexpensive, the kind that came with your MP3 player have the poorest isolation and are not designed to withstand the rigors of a working musician’s environment.

Custom molded earphones offer exceptional sound quality and isolation, a considerably higher price tag, and are difficult to test before buying since they’re made specifically for one person’s ears by an audiologist.

Universal Earphones combine the superior sound quality and isolation of the custom molded designs with the versatility, “out-of-the-box” readiness and affordable cost of the consumer phones. Interchangeable sleeves of foam or flexible rubber are used to adapt the earphone to the performer’s ear canal.

Personal Monitor mixers are an optional component Personal monitoring gives the performer an unprecedented level of control. But for the performer who desires more than simple volume and pan operation, a personal monitor mixer can be added.

These are especially useful for praise teams that either have a limited number of available auxiliary sends on the console, or lack a monitor engineer to operate the console.  A small monitor mixer allows the vocalists or players to customize their mixes themselves to hear exactly what they desire.

Theoretically, any mixer can double as a personal monitor mixer, but most lack one key feature; the input signals needed to find their way to the main (FOH) mixer. Large sound systems with separate monitor consoles use transformer-isolated splitters to send the signals to two places, but these are prohibitively expensive for most worship teams. Y-cables can be used to split microphone signals, but they can get messy and are somewhat unreliable.

A few manufacturers have introduced mixers with integrated microphone splitters. These can range from basic four channel mixers with volume and pan controls to larger, more fully featured monitor console.

And one more thing … make that two more things

The pain of change is still a factor.  Your praise team may have some difficulty adapting to in-ears after years of performing in front of stage monitors.

Another concern is cost.  A good wireless system – including a transmitter, receiver and earphones – can cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars.  One way to get started is to introduce personal monitoring gradually – one member of your praise team at a time.  You’ll eliminate at least one floor monitor, contributing to a quieter stage and give others performers (at rehearsal) a chance to try them out and experience the difference.