[thesteve]

Here's a general question...

When all these designs call for speakers, is there a source that they recommend? In a lot of the pictures the speakers look like basic car audio speakers or something in the <$5 category from Frys.

[pfirst]

The plans all have driver specs that follow a narrow recomended range, The forum members are always on the look out for bargans. My speakers had the correct range and were a closeout approved by Bill . When a company sells the discontinued models they can be bought for pennies on the dollar. In his large cabs recommends mostly Emenance drivers , He ususualy recommends 2-3 driver options and lists the advantage of each model.
My large cabs the DR 250's are a very difficult build and have to be air tight to function correctly. He has reccomended the wood to use (Baltic Birch plywood, tight wood with no airspaces. and has 7 layers instead of less expensive plywood that has 5). . and even the type of adhiesive you need to use is recommended.
The TLAH speakers that we put in the church are a very easy build and have an open design and are not closed in. Even the shape is not very important. The placement of the drivers are very important. The crossovers used are a Butterworth design and are spicific to the drivers you use. The wiring is also specific to the drivers you use. Some of the are wired in phase and some are not. Like I said earlier you can't throw cheep poor quality drivers into a cab and get good sound.
I studied and asked question on his web site forum for months before making my first build. These forum members are very helpfull and very knowledgeable and supportive . Bill is often active in the forum. I sent him a drawing of our church and he assisted me in choosing the correct speakers and their placement..

[pfirst]

I have just put the finishing touches On our praise team sound system, after 3 years of messing around it seems to be all worth it.
Here is the equipment list:
Amp #3 QSC 300 watt #2 run at 50%
1. Mains
2. Subs
3. front monitors
Peavey 900 Watt run at 30%
1. back Monitor for the drummer.
Board: Macky 24/8
EQ: dual Peavey mains and subs
dual DBX front monitors.
Sound processor: Beheringer : add a little studio reverb.
PA controller: DBX Rack PA
Mic's: Wireless System: #2 Audio technica 2000 leader and guitar
#2 AKG drummer's vocal mic/ additional hand mic and paster's mic
Wired: Shure 58 #3, 59 beta
Audio Tech M5
Condenser Mic MXL for the Keyboard ( have tried several other options and she likes this best.
Speakers: Custom design by Bill Fitzmaurice Mains and subs
Monitors: #2 Peavey ( use to be our mains.) #1 small Kustom 10 in for the drummer.
We put in #2 small wooden trap doors for the stage snakes and to store and keep the not used Mics out of the way. Worked great for almost no money. Stage boxes can get pretty pricey and still have no place to store the extra wires and mics.
My favorite toy is the DBX Rack PA. With this little toy you can pink the room, set limits for feed back and it really helped balance all the speakers. We can fine tune with the EQ's for our preferences.
We run the system in Mono and have full control of each speaker system. We can almost keep everyone happy.
So in closing, we have discussed several options that our church has done over the last 3 years to meet the needs of the Pastor and the praise team on a small budget.
Our praise team has now split in to two teams. Why did we do that?
1. Gives our praise team leader a little break.
2. Allows more people to participate in the praise team experience.
3. Gives us more flexibility in our music selections.
But it doubles the works of keeping the logistics of setting up the sound every Sunday. So I have set the stage up in quadrants and not by individual performers.
1. Back up singers and monitor and piano Lt side of the stage.
2. Lead section with monitor and Keys and my guitar Rt side.
3. Drums with monitor. We just repositioned the drums off center and is helped decrease the volume. We play at 85 Db so it is hard to keep the drum volume under control.

Yellow Team little yellow dots on the board at the levels
Purple team little purple dots on the board at the levels
Blue team ( on both teams ) don't have to use dots same people play every Sunday.
The board is color coded , every member always uses this same piece of equipment which is numbered too, same location on the board.
I walk in before the practice. and un-mute the colored tracks, put the sliders on the colored dots and we are ready to go.

That's the way we do it and it is much better than the unorganized fly by the seat of our paints that we use to do. Our sound is now consistent from Sunday to Sunday. The Boomy sound we started with is now gone, vocals are now clean and clear and out front , all is happy.
One last note. I use a small hand held digital recorder at the back of the room to listen to each Sunday and reset the next Sunday if there are any sound problems.
I am sure our system is not for every situation but it may give you some food for thought in setting up your system..

[Maestro_dmc]

Post up a track, I'd love to hear it.

[pfirst]

Once everything is dialed in, I'll do it.

[pfirst]

Just finished doing one more stage tweak. We set the the drums off center. Our stage is narrow in the back and wide in the front. The drums despite a cage were always too loud. By moving them off center and facing stage right, the volume dropped 1.5 Db. Huge benefit.
I will try to record something this Sunday if I have time to set it up, and remember to hit record. I tried using my Ipad this last Sunday but it has a limit of 320 bars. I am planning to use a cheep condenser mic with phantom power in to my little DP-1. All set up back at the sound booth. We will see how it records in the sanctuary.

[ibanez_dude]

I hate to be the downer here, but as an audio technician, I know that 1.5 Db is virtually negligible in terms of volume difference. It probably wouldn't be enough to notice. The drum shield and insulation that we setup for our kit recently knocked off about 5-6 Db on average, and that wasn't a huge difference. Noticeable, yes, worth it, yes, but not monstrously different

[Maestro_dmc]

It's not enough to notice.

Besides that, dB measurements without reference to distance from the source or weighting are meaningless anyway. SPL is always relative to the distance from the source, always.

You don't think that variations in playing style or intensity would change your dB measurement by 1.5dB? Or standing 3 to 6 feet further away?

Maybe you could start listing where and how you measured the dB each time when you post (at the mixing board, front row, right in front of the speaker system, etc.) As well as whether you were measuring with C weighting or A? Without knowing this stuff your measurements are not useful, even, believe it or not, to yourself.

You could create a map of the sanctuary and label the measurement positions you use. Then make a table to record them on using all the same settings each time. You will start to see patterns, and gather data sets that are actually based on consistent measurements.

[pfirst]

We had him play a solo in the original position of the drums , turned on the meter . Moved the drums to the new position and they immediately sounded quieter. Replayed the same lick and he meter was less, I know it is not very scientific but the results are the drums are less boomy and tighter now, and they no longer dominate the mix, isn't that the goal we all look for. The drummer commented that he liked the sound from this positions too. Our second drummer made the same comments on Sunday when he played. So I guess we can get all excited about terms and measurements but in the end how it sounds is all that counts out here in rural IA. No experts out here just trying to sound our best for our Lord.

[Maestro_dmc]

So I guess we can get all excited about terms and measurements but in the end how it sounds is all that counts out here in rural IA.

I only get excited when people use the terms and measurements correctly, otherwise, just slightly annoyed.

I am truly happy that your adjustments and rearrangements are working out for the betterment of the worship service. That is great. How it sounds really is all that matters.

When I post a correction I hope I can be taken as trying to further knowledge about the subject, and dispell myths, and contribute to the overall knowledge base on this cool forum.

As an actual "expert" on this stuff (and I'm not the only one here) I don't like to read people throwing around numbers, measurements or terms they seemingly don't understand. If I can help inspire someone to educate themselves on these subjects then great.

As you stated, the important thing was that moving the drums improved the sound, not whether they were 1.5dB quieter, but that they sounded less boomy and tighter.

[pfirst]

The volume of drums in the mix has always been a problem in our sanctuary. And with the new position they are down significantly . The additional benefit of improved sound is just an other benefit. Must be just dumb luck, didn't have a ruler, a robot to duplicate the exact pressure in striking the drum heads , I did have the I-Pad with the DB meter app back by the sound booth and it graphed out each performance and the second graph was lower, It said 1.5 difference. But that does' t make any difference, it just sounded quieter and better. Discussion of specifics , terms and definitions are great fun for the studio, equipment designers and sound engineers but don't carry much weight in our little rural church. Most church sound guys are just saps that got stuck with the job because no one else would do it. We grow by trial and error with some success and some failures. That's what this whole link was about. The trials and errors of a small church community striving to make their worship music the best it could be.
One last thought comes from from my many years of experiences. When I was young and I was once very smart, so I thought, became a Dr. and knew everything, so I thought, went to the top of several leadership organizations and knew everything ,so I thought, now that I am old, I finally know what I don't know. It is much more important than what I thought I knew and just had to share with every captured audience.
So if I can remember to push the right button, We will try for a sound check this Sunday.

[pfirst]

I was very excited when I went to church and saw the song list. They were several of my favorites, and one new song that I liked.
My excitement went away when I learned that our sound guys in the booth were out of town.
So our mix will be a little different than normal. But the recording is to hear the audio system.
I recorded it with a cheep condenser Mic ( my old MXL ). It was given phantom power and run into my little Tascam DR-1. The recording was made clean, back in the corner by our sound booth.
Just a little about the members today. Today we had our main praise leader and his vintage Taylor guitar and his 5 year old daughter on one of the mics, two female vocals, a keyboard player who is working on supplying us with bass (Our old bass player was our last pastor), our drummer/electric piano player, and me a poor excuse of a lead guitar player and occasional back-ground singer. We have two praise teams that exchange members from time to time. This is the first time we have played with this configuration. Listen close for the little girl, she knew the songs better than I did.
The first song was from practice and the rest are from the service and at the end is a short segment from a prayer so you can hear the spoken voice.
We only practice for 30-40 min on Sunday before Sunday School. We do 4 songs each Sunday, One hymn and 3 contemporary songs. This Sunday we are playing a new song, Give You Glory, neat song. It might be a little rough. We do the new song for 3 Sundays in a row to see if it is worth keeping in the rotation. So that is what you will be hearing.

On a personal note I need to apologize for my lack of patience with some of my posts. I am an old fat arrogant professional who's wife has on a diet and with the lack of food I seem to have lost much of my sense of humor and tolerance. So I'll sneak a cookie before my next post.

After listening to the recording it is a little more muddy than in real life but I did use a cheep Mic. May try it again with my Rodie NTA just for the fun of it.
Pay attention to the drums, Since repositioning they are significantly lower in the mix and they sound tighter and less boomy. We have tried changing the type of sticks, plexy sound cage
( helped some), and playing softer, they were still too loud (according to his wife). We then moved the drums 5 feet to the left and pointed them to the Rt and it was a very pleasing surprise. Our stage is shaped like a megaphone. I am planing to close them in with some additional panels and mic them for better control.
From were we started the change has been dramatic. Only a few members on the praise team even knew what we have been up to. We had to be inventive in our approach, due to money, But the number of people in the congregation who have told our praise leader how good we have been sounding lately has been heart warming. We started with several dull spots in the sanctuary and now the sound is consistent no matter where you sit. The vocal clarity and the drums are the most noted improvement.
So give it a listen.