Volume Levels
If you’re not comfortable with how your mix sounds or the volume level, etc… you should ask for feedback or walk around the room to see if it’s loud enough. That will help you get an idea of how the speaker sounds and the audience’s experience.
Here are some pointers:
* For praise, you want to make sure you can always hear the person leading when they’re addressing the crowd – like a prayer. That might mean you need to turn others down a bit or watch the compressor during the run-through to see if it’s compressing too much.
* Use the decibel meter we have and make sure the praise doesn’t go over 92 at the sound booth in Willard. It can go up to 97 in the middle of the auditorium b/c that is a strong peak and you have a lot of voices/clapping around you.
* For the speaker, this is the most important. You always want to hear him/her very well and clear. They should be loud but not overpowering. You shouldn’t have to struggle to hear them. This is a tough one to gauge, but if you’re not sure then you need to ask for feedback or do a walkaround to make sure you can hear them.
Here are two articles from Willow Creek sound person Chris Gille, whom I’ve met at conferences and has a lot of experience:
http://www.churchproduction.com/go.php/article/3342
Recording/Resampling Rates
Just so we’re all on the same page about what we use for recording and how we do recording…one caveat is that this is Mac-centric b/c most of us use macs.
Podcast: Sws 2009.12.20 Praise
Here’s this week’s praise set:
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Welcome to Our World
O Holy Night
Soundman: Richard Tay
Praise Leader: James Kim
Countryman E6 on a Shure Wireless
“We are using a Countryman for Matthew’s wireless and he likes to pace back and forth as he talks. However, when he does this, the volume goes up when he turns left and down when he turns right. He wears his mic on the right ear. I am not sure if this is an issue I can improve by playing around with the gains on the wireless pack.
Do you think a DPA mic would be better or could solve the problem? (We currently don’t own one.) Or a compressor? Matthew also likes to speak softly at times and then he raises his voice for added emphasis. I ended up having to play around with the volume turning the speaker up and down if he was too soft or too loud. Another factor was that I used the Countryman mic whereas the wireless pack was calibrated for the lapel mic, and I didn’t adjust the gain. I was going to try just using the correct wireless pack that is calibrated for the Countryman mic next time to see if that improves the volume for Matthew.
Please let me know what you think from your experience. Thank you!”