Sound Levels

Hi,
In the last week we have had a number of complaints of the sound levels being too high in the worship part of the service, making it hard for people to hear themselves singing.
I have asked Gary to see if we can get the drum levels down which would allow us to bring down the levels of the entire band.

After thinking about it for a bit I've come up with a few guidelines.
- Use the sound level meter, keep the peak level to 86db A weighted slow or 90db C weighted slow. (for more info on how to use the meter, talk to me when your on on Sunday).

The following does not apply to all songs, use it where you can.
- Try not to drown out the singing, in other words aim to make your mix at the level where you can hear the band and the people singing. This is very important on hymms, but may also work on other songs.
-Blend voices on choruses, use reverb (or more reverb) just on the chorus.
-Vary the amount of bottom end energy (amount in subs), adding more to louder songs
-Turn off all mics on the drums other than the kick on louder songs and turn off any unused mics.
-Cut (gently) the 2-4k frequency on louder vocals, electric guitar, snare, brass on a loud song as this is the ears most sensitive range, you can do this easily by changing the EQ on the sub group.

However when the band does a "special", in other words the worship leader asks the audience to sit down, you can give a little more level as people are not trying to sing with that song.

If you have other thoughts about this please comment,
Thanks,
Keith

Tech's Needed

We are currently short a few key people in sound and multimedia, please email me keith@newhopechurch.ca if your interested in helping out. All training is provided, commitment is once every 4 weeks.
Thanks,
Keith

LED

After a few years of watching, LED lighting has come to the point where brightness, features and cost are affordable for us and probably most small churches.

Why LED?
For us as we live in older rented facilities where we cannot do upgrades to the AC feeds, LED provides more lighting options per watt. We recently have been trying Microh's LED KDII Par64 RBG.

These lights are comparable to a 300w Par56 in brightness, but draw only 30watts. A side benefit is that they can be used in locations where kids are running around without having to worry about small burnt hands (we have a lot of the under 5 crowd!)

So far we have found these lights to offer very saturated red, green and blue colors, but due to their RGB design, yellows and oranges are harder to mix.
Since LED lights can only be dimmed by turning them off and on a flicker free design is essential for video, and these seem to work well.

The LEDP64KDII can be operated in several stand alone modes, including a music chase mode or by using 4 DMX channels (dim,R,G,B).

They donot produce an acceptable white light and I wouldn't consider using them for a front or side fill on any person, but for accent lighting, superb! (YMMV, try before buying)

Considerations when buying LED's
Brightness - equal to XXX incandescent watts
Flicker Free - for less video interference
Number and Brightness of LEDs
Color of LEDs
Ability to produce white
Stand alone or DMX operation
Number of DMX channels required.