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Posts Tagged ‘sound systems’

What costs more? Drum Booth or Fixing a Sanctuary?

Posted by jdbsound on June 10, 2020


What costs more?  Or, what will give you the most bang for the buck?  Did you know that for less than the cost of a fully enclosed drum booth, you can fix all of the acoustical issues of a typical sanctuary and not need a drum booth?

Here is a typical drum booth churches are buying.  This booth retails for $4,300.00 and is often on sale for $3,000.00 plus shipping.

Here are all of the sound problems the drum booth solved. Keeps the drums out of the mix, and the people in the front of the church have less noise from the drum kit. The downside to all of this is that often, the drummer plays louder, which leads to many getting tennis elbow.  Plus, hearing damage often occurs.  There is one extra cost to include.  Often drummers need headsets or floor monitors to hear everyone else on stage.  What is often overlooked is that churches should have the drummer sign a liability waiver that the drummer will not sue the church for premature hearing loss and permanent damage to their arms due to tennis elbow.  Drummers often have to play louder in order to hear themselves inside a drum booth or shield.

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Here is an example of a modest church that decided to fix the worship space instead of getting a drum shield or booth.  The material costs, including the paint, were $1,000.00.  Three people over 3 Saturdays completed the installation.  If you look carefully at the photo below, six months later, there is no drum booth around the drummer.  They don’t need one anymore.

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The following is a list of the planned sound issues solved:

  1. No more standing waves
  2. No more deadspots or hotspots
  3. Eliminate flutter echoes often heard off the back walls on stage.
  4. No more excessive bass

Bonus fixes included and no extra cost:

  1. Better speech intelligibility
  2.  Increases the signal-to-noise ratio to 21dB throughout the room
  3. Most of the floor monitor spill was gone
  4. Less sound system distortion
  5. No more bass distortion
  6. Equalized the room to remove excess energy at 400 Hertz -20dB
  7. Went from 18 inches to 38 inches of before feedback,
  8. The room is +/- 1.5dB throughout the room
  9. Makes the room easier for the musicians to perform
  10. Improved sound for people with hearing aids
  11. Before, about 15% of the congregation was singing, now it’s around 60% after 4 months
  12. The sound team is having an easier time mixing.
  13. No drum shield of any kind
  14. Drummers are playing quieter without being asked to.
  15. The drummer can hear everyone on stage with minimum floor monitor support
  16. The pastor is less fatigued after preaching
  17. No more sound complaints if the sound is too loud
  18. The sound system sounds so much better
  19. The bass from the sound system is much more dynamic
  20. The bass from the bass guitar is cleaner and not overpowering any of the other instruments

These are all of the comments various church members, musicians, and the sound team shared after the first 4 months of the acoustical changes.  All they were hoping for was less bass drowning out everyone on stage, eliminating hotspots and deadspots in the audience area and on stage, and stopping the loud reflections off the back wall affecting the musicians and the pastor when preaching.  The diffusers gave them 23 improvements instead of just three of them.  No other custom or “off the shelf” acoustical system can do all of that in one step unless you have unlimited cash at 30 times the cost.

Drum Shield or Fixing a worship space.  For the cost of a drum booth, you can fix up a church seating to 800 with some sweat equity and not need a drum booth and all the supporting technology.

Posted in Church Acoustics, Church Sound Systems | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What costs more? Drum Booth or Fixing a Sanctuary?

Stop Sharing your Toothbrush/Microphone

Posted by jdbsound on March 17, 2020


Back in 2006, I wrote this original article about how sharing microphones can pass on colds, flues and other illnesses. In 2009, the manufacturer, Point Source Audio asked to update the article to promote good microphone etiquette after the SARS in 2008. Now with Covid-19, this is another opportunity to educate people about how to better protect themselves from communicable infections.  Since Jan 12, 2020, thousands of people have read or downloaded the article.  I thought it was time to dust off the original post from 2006.

Here is a link to the original article. Personal Microphones as toothbrushes 2006
The footnotes are interesting. Here is an example. I can’t authenticate this clip, but it is a great story.

There was a story about Elvis when recording – all morning they did take after take, none sounded right. During lunch, someone pulled the windscreen off his special mic, rinsed it in the sink – to find a bunch of black junk coming out of it. Did that a few times, put it on a low-heat hair dryer, put it back on the mic. After lunch, Elvis “hit it” with just one take.
From Blake Engel, All Church Sound

*** UPDATE ***

I’ve mentioned on other posts about using plastic food wrap or balloons over microphone capsules and windscreens.  This idea only works great if the plastic is removed between the uses of a microphone.   Passing microphones around is not a good idea either.  If you can get a second mic, the better.

 

Posted in Church Sound Systems, Rants | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Stop Sharing your Toothbrush/Microphone

Really Useful Charts and Helps

Posted by jdbsound on May 20, 2019


This is a chart that gives you wavelengths of sound for all frequencies, speech, and music ranges

This is a Church Height chart. These are the minimum heights. Building new churches with lower ceiling heights degrade speech and congregational singing, and costs more to heat, cool, and maintain.

This chart shows the difference between the absorption rate versus decibels. For example, something that is rated as a coefficient value 0.5 is equal to 3dB of sound absorption.

How to Equalizer a church when you can’t afford professional help, or your EQ settings have been changed, and you don’t have time to get professional help. https://www.jdbsound.com/art/art537.html

Let us know if these files are useful. We would like to add more of them.

Posted in Educational Must Read Articles | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on Really Useful Charts and Helps

 
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