At my church, we still have an analog Mixer. It has 24 channels, 4 sub groups, Left/Right and Mono out. We use the sub groups. Vocal, Drums, Instruments and Leadership mics. The mixer has mutes on every channel, on each of the mute groups and on the 3 master outputs. Fortunately, we have a church were the acoustics are stable. We can run all of the mics open without feedback for normal worship levels. Monitors are stable and so on. It is also a good sound rig. When I run the mixer, I turn every channel on and shut off any mute switches. I control all of the levels with the sub groups. I don’t want any surprises.
This Sunday it was my turn to run the mixer as we are on a weekly rotation. Thursday night was rehearsals. Missed the rehearsal. Friday night the Youth used the sanctuary and someone used the mixer. Things were changed but it only took about a minute to set everything back.
As usually, you arrive at the church early for a pre service warmup. Dialed up a great monitor mix. Everything seem right and as typical, we rehearse and warm up with the FOH speakers off. When the worship team stopped it was time to turn on some background music. Turned on the CD player, saw activity on the channel, raiser the fader for the channel and the channel was assigned to the Mono Main Out. Raise the mono out and nothing happened. What!!!
Checked the power switch to the powered speakers. Check to make sure the processor was on and passing a signal. Nothing. Called the head tech for the church, he checked everything out. He checked the mixer and he agreed with me and thought that the power switch was faulty. He removed the power switch and bypassed it. Still no sound! Double checked and found that the power lights on the back of the powered speakers were indeed on. The head tech and I stared at each other confused wondering why there was still no sound. Then he looked at the mixer again and this time noticed that the Mute switch on the Master Mono Main out was engaged. He hit the mute switch and the rest of the sound system came to life.
In the year of mixing at the church, the Main Left/Right and Mono outs have never been muted. The mixer is a spilt mixer where 16 channel are on one side of the mixer, 8 channel on the other side of the mixer and the Groups and master outs are near the middle of the mixer. For some reason we were blinded in not seeing the red mute lights in that area of the mixer as there are other red lights in the area for other things.
Later I learned that a recently hired youth leader came from a church were the sound system was so unstable that you had to mute everything all the time. They muted anything that wasn’t needed and because they left the mixer on 24/7, they had the habit of muting the master outputs as well. The head sound tech and I had a good laugh at the whole experience. For me, I should have known better as this is about the 3rd time something like this has happened. This is the first time with powered speakers, but before I had people thinking there was something wrong with the mixer. So please, unless you have a wonky unstable system, please don’t use the master mute switches. They are great for a studio but not for live sound.
Joseph De Buglio
Welcome to the world of Church Acoustics & Sound Systems 