Church Tech Arts

Anthony Coppedge has a good post at his blog about the way people ask for equipment recommendations. I laughed when I read it because just the night before, I had used the exact same illustration. As I talked about in Asking for Help, I get several requests for advice on equipment a month (sometimes several a week). I’m cool with that; as an equipment geek, I’m more than happy to talk gear with anyone. 

I’m amused sometimes when the question comes in like this, however, “We want to get a new mixer for our church, what do you recommend?” Most times, that’s the e-mail. Well, that’s not true, a lot of times people will tell me they read the blog and really enjoy it. Stroking the ego is a great way to get people to respond to your emails .

As you can probably guess though, there’s not really enough information there to make any kind of recommendation. I get this question often enough that I have a standard list of questions that I reply with. If you ask me that, here’s what you’ll get in reply:

What is driving the desire to get a new board? Digital desks offer recallable setups, internal dynamic and effects capabilities, digital signal transport, and it’s the latest technology; but you may or may not benefit from those features. 

What are the requirements of the new board (channel count, mix busses, outputs, type of output–analog or digital)?

What are the goals of the new board? Ease of use, improved sound quality, increased feature set, more I/O, smaller footprint, elimination of outboard gear, better monitoring & metering…there’s a lot to consider.

What kind of monitoring system do you use (wedges, IEMs, Aviom, etc.)?

Who operates the board, and what is their experience level? Who would train new operators on the new board? Who will train them 2 years from now?

Who will be installing the new board? If it will be installed by someone at the church, what is their level of expertise? Or will dealer installation be required?

What does the existing infrastructure look like? Do you have a permanently installed snake? How many channels? Where is the amp rack, and what kind of loudspeaker management do you have?

What does the rest of the system look like? Do you have a rack of external effects, compressors and the like? How much of it is worth keeping?

What kind of budget do you have?

Of course, that is not an exhaustive list to make a recommendation, but it at least gets the conversation going. The funny thing is, when I reply with this list of questions, about 1/3 of the time, I never hear from the person again. Were they just looking for a blanket recommendation? Did they not want to do the hard work of really determining what the best fit for their church is? I’m guessing my experience is not unique.

If you ask any of the great people who write blogs on church technology for a recommendation on equipment, you will likely get the same helpful response. Most of the guys I know are more than happy to share their knowledge. And I’m pretty sure none will answer the “which mixer” question with, “You should buy a _insert your favorite mixer here_.” 

Spending money in a church is serious business. People give money to the church with the expectation that it will be spent to advance the Kingdom and help people. Those of us with the authority to spend it need to really weigh out what we’re spending it on. And sometimes that means really thinking through our options.

So ask the questions, but be prepared to be answered with more questions. And really think through your options. Just because we use an M7, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for you (and when Upper Room moves, we won’t be using an M7 anymore…). Just because North Point uses a Digi Venue doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for you either. Would I like a Venue? Sure, but I’d probably have to make do without speakers…  

With that said, let’s get some dialogs going!

Yesterday I listened in on a webinar sponsored by iLevite and Shure. Chris Lyons of Shure gave a good summary of where we are right now with the digital TV transition and the reallocation of spectrum. There wasn’t a lot of new information, mainly because there haven’t been that many developments, but it was a good seminar nonetheless. Here’s the upshot.

As far as the “White Spaces” goes, the FCC recently released it’s report on field tests. TV Technology has a good summary article on the report. In the testing of the new wireless devices Google, Microsoft and others want to bring to market, it was found that the devices could detect and avoid TV stations and other wireless carriers (ie. mics) about 50% of the time. Doug Lung, author of the TVT article mentioned above, concludes that these White Space Devices (WSDs) are likely to cause interference. Regardless, the FCC seems to be convinced that the WSDs can work. They will issue a ruling on Nov. 5th.

The whole issue with WSDs is a murky one, as no one really knows what it will mean for church sound, schools, theaters, sound companies, etc.. One of the plans of the WSD proponents is to put together a database using geo-location and registered frequencies to avoid interference. This plan has its own problems, of course. The good news, if there is any with WSDs, is that we’ll at least have some real information to act on come Nov. 5th.

The other topic discussed is one we’ve dealt with here before; the 700 Mhz band (698 Mhz-806 Mhz). As previously written about here, the days for us to use the 700 Mhz band for wireless mics are numbered. We’ll know exactly how numbered on Nov. 5th. Shure has been leading the charge of an industry coalition to establish a 24-month transition period for users of wireless mics in the 700 Mhz band. If the FCC agrees to this, we would, in theory, have roughly 2 years (from Feb 17, 2009 or another arbitrary date) to stop using our wireless mics in that band. 

This would be a God-send to the thousands of churches, schools and other venues that are looking at multiple thousands of dollars to replace existing wireless gear. Being able to spread the costs out over a 2 year period would be most helpful. Personally, I doubt we’ll get that much time. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a year. 

Like I said earlier, if you own wireless mics that operate in the 700 Mhz band, start making plans now to replace them. It’s not a matter of “if” but of “when.” The question is today, what do we buy? The answer to that is, “Wait a few more weeks.” Once the FCC issues its ruling, we’ll have more guidance on how to proceed. 

Given this climate of uncertainty in the wireless spectrum, I’m looking at trying to get away from as many wireless mics as possible for Upper Room and CPC. I’m hoping to drop down to 2 wireless IEMs and go Aviom for the rest of the band. Ideally, we’ll only use wireless mics for the pastor and other verbals during the service. I want to keep my vocalists on wired mics. They’re cheaper and sound better to boot.

In the meantime, we have a few days left to comment on the ruling. Shure has an excellent resource with full instructions on how to file a comment. If enough of us get together on this, we might be able to buy some more time to make the switch out of the 700 Mhz band. Follow this link to learn more on making a comment. Hurry–we only have until Monday, Oct. 27 to comment. After that, we get what we get.

Stay tuned for more information. I’m guessing that the FCC’s Nov. 5 ruling will be a topic on the FaithTools “Live from WFX” episode coming up. In the meantime start planning for change–’cause it’s coming!

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of a church that upgrades from an analog to a  digital board is not the loss of that sweet “analog sound” (whatever that means), but that the board is still used like an analog board. This is especially true of my favorite digital board for churches, the Yamaha M7CL. This is mainly because it’s technically a “hybrid” board; that is it’s rear panel is populated with analog inputs and outputs, but everything on the inside is digital. Higher end, “true” digital boards require the use of stage racks and FOH racks for I/O, and transmit those signals in the digital domain. Doing things that way pretty much requires you to re-think your system. An M7 however, can be dropped right  in to the space left by the old analog board. And that’s a shame, because it has a lot more to offer.

One of the few complaints I’ve had with our  M7CL is that it only has 16 omni ouputs. And while that seems like a lot, they get used up pretty quickly when you have 6 monitors, 9 IEMs, a Great Room, and 3 recording sends to feed, not to mention the house and aux fed subs. Thankfully Yamaha included three MY-card slots to expand the I/O capability of the board. When I arrived at Upper Room, I was curious about the Aviom card in slot 3. It seemed no one actually used the Aviom system, as all services preferred the wireless IEMs (which were fed from a wild array of Y-cords that also fed the floor wedges). Yet there was that Aviom card. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to use it for more than a cover for slot 3. So we did.

After discussion options with my Lead Sound Engineer, we decided that the Aviom card would make a great digital snake. Combined with the Aviom 16/0, we end up being able to transport 16 channels of our choosing via a single Cat-5 cable. At the receiving end, we simply hooked up 8 of our IEM transmitters to the 16/0. Why only 8? Stereo, baby!

At my previous church, one of my favorite features of the Aviom system was the ability to pan instruments left and right. That makes for a much more intelligible mix at lower volumes. But with limited analog outputs, we’ve been running our PSM-700s and 600s in mono mode. With the “digital snake,” we can now run most of our IEMs in stereo. It seems that someone at Yamaha considered this a possibility as well, and made it easy to do. Turns out you can link 2 mix busses together (1&2, 3&4, etc.) as a stereo pair. Then when you select a channel, the Mix 1 pot acts as Pan, while Mix 2 acts as level. 

It gets better. When you do a fader flip (aka “sends on fader”), you can choose either of the 2 linked mix busses (say, 1 or 2) and you will get adjustments for level only. That way, you don’t have to try to figure out if you’re adjusting pan or level when you fader flip. It’s always level. One could argue that it would be nice to pan on the faders, but I think that’s complicated. 

Another cool thing about the M7 (and most digital consoles for that matter) is that you can assign just about anything to the Matrix busses. You can even run them pre- or post-fade. That means you effectively have another 8 mix busses at your disposal. And now that we’ve freed up a bunch of omni outputs, we can get creative. We don’t normally run wedges at Upper Room, but once in a while we need them. Since we still have all 6 monitor amps up and running, we patched them into the omni outs, and built 3 matrixes (matrices?) to feed 3 of  them. We can also use a matrix output to feed the video booth, and with the remote control software, I can adjust the mix from the booth with my laptop (a MacBook Pro running Windows under VMWare’s Fusion—aren’t Intel Macs great?). We can also use another matrix to send to the Great Room. 

The other upshot of this whole configuration is that we’ve cleaned out quite a few cords from FOH. Since the 16/0 resides in the same rack as the PSM-700s, we built a couple of custom DB-25 breakouts that are just long enough to reach. Once we add a power distro, there will be just a few connections (which we’ll probably make on a single rack strip) to the outside world. Thus, if we need IEMs somewhere else in the building for an event, we can pull a few cords and take the whole rack with us.

The beauty of a digital board shines brightly when it comes to setting up for the three different types of services we run each weekend. The traditional service typically uses one or two monitors, and it’s a simple matter of digital patching to set that up. The contemporary service uses up to 8 of the IEMs each week, occasionally a wedge or two, plus the butt kicker. So they don’t run out of mix busses, we have them set up with mono IEMs, with the other mixes falling in behind. Upper Room normally doesn’t need more than 6 IEMs and rarely a wedge, so we run stereo IEMs. The only thing necessary to accommodate all these setups is loading a different file.

Even with all this capability, it’s still easy for our volunteer sound engineers to manage. Because we can do the configuration up front, they simply load the right setup file.  These are just some of the reasons that I think Yamaha has really hit it out of the park with the M7, at least for the church market. If I would have had to attempt a set up like this at my previous church, with an analog board, it would have required a significant amount of patching every weekend. As it was, I had 5 patchbays in that system to accommodate inserts, direct outs and inputs. The ability to change the configuration of the system by loading a file is truly cool, not to mention a huge timesaver. 

May this inspire to you to re-think how you’re using your digital board. If you’ve not jumped into the digital lake yet, perhaps this will give you some reasons to do so. And don’t get me started on having two dynamic processors on each channel. Try that on an analog desk! If anyone is interested in more details of our configuration, let me know, I’d be happy to provide them.

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Wednesday and Thursday marked my first ever Upper Room all-staff retreat. I have to tell you, it was a great time. As my colleague, Steve, noted, it was a perfect mix of side-splitting laughter and deep, thoughtful conversations. We spent a good deal of time hashing out what some of our ministry objectives would be for the next season of Upper Room. One that rose to the top of the list was to become a culture of leadership development. This is a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

One of my strengths is that of achiever. I have a very high work ethic, and am known for working long hours to get the job done. Try as I might though, I can’t get everything done. And as much as I like to think I know a lot, I don’t know it all. One thing I’m learning is that the key to being really successful in ministry is to work yourself out of a job. And that means training others to lead.

We’re working on creating positions at Upper Room called “Volunteer Staff.” They are positions will full job descriptions, expectations and reporting structures, just like staff. They’re volunteer because we can’t afford to pay them yet. I’ve been working at developing two volunteer staff positions, one for sound and one for lights. This last week was a perfect example of what happens when we multiply ourselves through this kind of a process.

Our lead sound engineer, Erik, and I have been talking about re-working the wiring at FOH. We wanted to use the Aviom card in the M7 as a digital snake to feed our IEMs. That would free up a bunch of Omni-outs for other uses, and eliminate a ton of Y-cords. Over the last few weeks I’ve been assembling the parts to make it all happen. I got the first breakout cable soldered up, and Erik did the other one.

We decided that Tuesday was the day to make the change. Here’s where it gets cool. I have a creative staff meeting on Tuesdays. While I was in that meeting, Erik was in the sanctuary, re-working FOH. After my meeting, I came out and helped. We tweaked some things while I was there and we got it mostly put back together. On Wednesday, while I was at staff retreat, Erik was going through everything, finishing up and testing.

This is a beautiful thing as I thought about it. It was hard in a way, because I really like doing installs, and making cables. Call me a geek, but it’s something I love. But how cool is it that I’m able to be off doing one thing, while at the same time, other things are getting done? It’s a multiplication of effort.

As we grow, it will be critical to have volunteer leaders in many areas of ministry. It’s funny, because when I first became a Christ-follower, I went to a small church, and this is just how we did it. Lately, it seems the trend in churches is to hire staff for everything. The downside is that it costs a lot, and it takes away opportunities for the body to serve one another. It’s amazing how much people will commit to if you raise the bar high enough.

I’m really excited to continue to work with my staff–they’re both great guys. My goal is to pour into them, so they can in turn, pour into the rest of the tech team. It not only shares the workload, but also the blessing of being part of something bigger than ourselves. This summer, my desire is to raise up video production teams, and graphic design teams. We have some incredibly talented people in our midst, and to not utilize that creativity is a shame. Plus, I get jazzed about working with people who are really good at what they do.

Think about how much more you could get done if there were two, three or six of you. Then go clone yourself–with volunteers!

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