Tune Your System
I’m always curious. Pretty relentlessly so.
Whenever I’m visiting a church, and I get the opportunity to see its soundboard, I look for patterns of overcompensation.
What do I mean?
Is one frequency band consistently turned down or up on most channels? Are the gains cranked and the faders set low?
Before I lose the non-techies, let me ask you this:
Do you have a guitar player that refuses to tune the guitar? Even if you ask nicely? Or if you have an acoustic piano, when was the last time you tuned it? Three months? Six months? Four years?
On a long enough timeline, even the mildly tone-deaf can tell something is amiss with an out-of-tune instrument.
I get it. I’m preaching to the choir. You probably have a piano tuner that comes out several times a year “whether you need it or not.” And all your guitar players are avid Snark users.
But did you know your audio system also goes out of tune?
It does!
Things tend to drift out of tune over time and with…tinkering. We begin to experience more feedback, the speakers sound harsh and folks complain it’s too loud, and there’s a loud section and a quiet section on the sanctuary. Audio systems must be tuned at least every five years.
Worse, when the system was never correctly set up, it’s never been all it can be. Imagine that $3500 Taylor guitar…that has terrible action (the strings are too high, making it difficult to play) because it wasn’t properly set up or has changed over the years due to humidity and temperature changes. Even great gear can sound bad if not optimized. Why would you spend 20, 50, or 100 thousand dollars and not spend 1 thousand, making it sound its best?
When your system was installed, the company likely spent an hour or two with sophisticated software “tuning” your system. Unlike tuning a guitar, the average tech can’t do this. But when we do our $1200 system tuning and optimization, we send not one, but two techs who spend an entire day with a fine-tooth comb and the diligence of a mom looking for lice in her fourth grader’s hair!
LOL. Seriously, when we tune and optimize your systems, we:
Properly equalize the system to avoid feedback and harsh frequencies
Identify faulty equipment like blown speakers and phase issues in speaker wiring
Optimize the system making it sound its best
Fix gain structure issues and undo overcompensated channel EQ’s
Alert you to what equipment may need to be replaced so you can plan well
Shoot, and while we’re at it, we can train your tech team to maximize and optimize their skills, making them more musical in their mixing.
No matter what you decide, now you know you’ll want to tune your system at some point!
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
Tune Your System (Nº 355)
