Improving Your Church Sound System

Let’s take a 10,000 ft. view of your church sound system so you can know what to improve.
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00:00 Introduction
01:10 Foundation
02:48 System Tuning
03:50 Console Setup
05:00 The 4 Pillars of Great Sound at Church
11:32 The 3 Finishing Touches for Great Sound at Church
17:02 How to incorporate plugins to your sound board?
19:21 Best way to practice your soft skills: Virtual Sound Check
20:44 Conclusion

[@BillyBoy66]

Hi James.... Our weakest link was me, the sound guy.... 🤣ha! But seriously, our weakest link was definitely system tuning, as you found out when you came to our church. Ever since you EQ's the mains utilizing the spec analyzer, the system as a whole sounds MUCH better and it's so much easier getting the FOH mixer to give you the tone you're looking for. People comment on our FOH and livestream sounds all the time now. It really sounds great! Thanks for coming out.

[@AttawayAudio]

Glad I could be of service, Bill! Of course it's the user that KEEPS running it that makes a big difference too :)

[@TechyTimM]

Great overview. I appreciate the bottom-up approach - your videos are super practical and helpful. One thing that isn't in the video: in most of the churches where I've worked, the first place we had to start was by incorporating acoustic treatments like baffles and diffusers to remove the crazy long reverb that created sludge.

[@AttawayAudio]

I agree - if the sound system is a bus, the acoustics are the road.

[@AKustik632]

My sound engr hero! Thanks again James!

[@GabaSaminu]

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

[@PeterMetzger]

Great advice and structure! When our church recently moved into a new (old) building that had a sound system from ~1985 installed (no I'm not kidding), we worked with an AV integrator to install a new system. I encouraged our church leadership not to hold back on the speakers/amps as they needed to be hung and would be a pain to change, so needed to last much longer. We ended up going with a d&b speaker system and it has been great for our space! We went "medium" on the consoles, with an SQ-6 at FOH and SQ-5 at broadcast, which have been an outstanding decision, providing everything we need, plus reliability, without going overboard on expense. The one area where we probably cut the corner by too much was in our wireless mic system; we went with 6 channels of Shure BLX and coordinating frequencies is a constant headache. I'm hoping we can move to a system with at least some degree of network management available.

[@nathanharrellyoutube]

We have a system installed from the early 2000s (audio) it is the last thing that needs to be upgraded and is the weakest link

[@AttawayAudio]

Glad you guys were wise on the front end! Stinks about your wireless mics, but those are a lot simpler to upgrade, that's for sure!

[@nathanharrellyoutube]

Also, we have 10 Sennheiser ew100 mics 3 g4s and 7 g3s and the older ones give use the most problems

[@abelchombaj]

Learned a lot from you james! thank you sir .

[@AttawayAudio]

You're very welcome! Glad to be of service.

[@MrGuitar25xp]

Hi James...We have a zoomL20 mixer at church. It is malfunctioning now...when we switch on it cycles then just ask you to please power off...have to switch on and off several times before it boot properly and work....any advice here??

[@AttawayAudio]

Replace it. How much is reliability worth to you?

[@MrGuitar25xp]

@@AttawayAudio will consider..thanks much👍

[@maxammo6282]

LOL zoom equipment is entry level stuff. I would suggest you get something from Allen and Heath.

[@BubbleWrapPerson]

Turns out our speakers are blown. I thought 30 year old Bose were just that bad.

[@AttawayAudio]

Can't fix that in the mix