controlling sound level

[volounteerParticipant]

@mike C

I agree that we should go through the whole system and plan the set up better and then tweak everything then finally save scenes.

This set up was apparently done in a hurry on a Wednesday, early in June, to be able to use the next Sunday. Don’t know if the music director or the dealer drove that schedule.

I suspect that the digital is totally new to the music director and he relied on the tech to set it up good enough to start with. Especially since the MD did not seem very familiar with the Qu32 controls and options before the set up day.
The tek did have a lot of experience with the SQ , and by inference the QUs too, but unclear how savvy he was for church application with volounteers using it.

To their credit the basic system was workable on day 1 albeit not as easy as it could have been to use. OTOH I do not know if they calibrated the screen and faders, checked the room for resonances to set up EQ, or other things I would have liked to have seen done first.

The church used to have a 40 channel analog which complicated things a little going down to only 32 inputs. I suspect the digital complicated it more. Not sure how savvy the tek was wrt digital.

There are a lot of myths out there about digital, which I say having studied digital theory in grad school. And some text books by phds even get Nyquist theorem wrong. Close enough for government work, but still shows how they really do not understand digital.

Also many people still do not understand the differences between dBFS , dBu , dBV , dB SPL – A B C M K weighting, VU, LUFS/LKFS, and how they relate in the real world.

And don’t get me started on the sample peak problem myth. If the dBFS never went over 0 and you do the D/A from a level below -12dBFS then you will never have a sample peak or clipping problem. There is no reason to ever run digital too high when you can just turn the knob on the power amp to the right to make things louder. Digital is so far above the noise floor and has more headroom than you will ever need.

There is a real expert at another church who is related to one of our deacons that I told the music director could be used to help with problems.

I am trying to gently educate him on topics like intelligibility, LUFS, dBFS, VU, to ease him away from his analog mindset.

We have some other issues that need documenting as playback from the PC is awkward. The output depends on the input on that PC. We have to know to switch the cable on the pc output or there will be no sound.

[volounteerParticipant]

@markpaman

Roger that.

I thought that if we set the system up with the monitor volume controls at max then the pianist and organist could lower them if they did not need it that loud, which would not affect the FOH or cause feedback issues.

I guess I also questioned, not being a performer, if they really need so many monitors on stage. Plus that one in the Loft.

The tek set up one PEQ for one low frequency but my ears say they occasionally set things where the squeal calls for another higher PEQ so the operator does not have to start moving faders to fix it.

It would also help if they did not have so many open mikes. Not sure why they did that unless it was supposed to somehow simplify the volounteers job. I would have preferred more scenes to do that. Currently we have a single standard scene for Sunday and a simpler one for Wednesday nights. I would have had at least ten scenes for Sunday so we could just keep loading the next one with everything set for that part of the performance.

[volounteerParticipant]

@mike C

We only have to appease the music director. He does not share his thinking with us.

The kids band brought in their own gear for VBS and it was LOUD!. But they were at the very front and really did not bother us nor did our level change what was heard as our mikes were behind them.

My only problem was they kept playing when the pastor was trying to talk on his wireless mike that came through FOH. I had to nudge his mike and the mains up 10 dB so he could be heard over the performers.

That was the less usual situation. Normally on Sunday I notice no problems unless somehow we get a squeal. Not sure what the operator du jour did besides lower the main fader. Squeals are very rare so I am not sure which mike(s) mike be the culprit.

We have four hanging mikes and 2-3 on booms. IF there really are floor wedges in front of the choir then they might get into those mikes. I suspect it is the loft monitors that are getting into the mikes. But to be honest this is all inference as the MD has not documented any of this or shared details of the total operation.

The track music comes out the main speakers hung from the ceiling in front of the pulpit. Supposedly the MD and volounteer du jour tweak the monitors levels and also rehearse any performers to tweak their mike faders too.

I am trying to get the MD to normalise the CDs using a LUFS adjustment program so they all play back as the same loudness and wont need much if any tweaking.

Meters may not be a fix but they are a useful tool to simply making fixes.

[Author]

Posts