Sound Tech wanted Huddersfield to fix PA issues in a Church

[paulears]

So sad that my experiences are exactly the same as James's and many others on the forum and elsewhere. Church installs often look simple and straightforward and never are. Just a huge list of problems, most amazingly obvious but a total surprise to the folk at the church. I've been doing a lot of recording work in churches this summer and the best installed sound that actually works for them seems to have a common theme. Old fashioned column speakers, with small drivers, mics on goosenecks in the traditional places and no radio mics seem by far the best and most stable. I've noticed denomination, size and budgets have no real impact, and the worst are the cobbled together ones with every element wrong, that have nasty radio mics on everyone, irrespective of them actually saying anything. One had the verger tip person - clearly the sort of person nobody said no to, wearing a radio mic and trying to stand next to the person speaking, who didn't have one. You'd never see systems this bad in anything other than a church.

[Junior8]

It's even worse really I was in a church the other week where two members of some committee were in the course of being bamboozled into buying a totally over specified instalation in a space that really didn't need anything at all. I could hear their conversation everywhere in the space! In these cases I always advise, if asked, to divide the sum quoted by the number of hours a week it was in use and see if the answer looked ludicrous over a five year period. It usually does. Churches have better things to spend three figures on.

 

Actually I'm with Paul on this. On the way out of the church I was visiting I said to my wife something along the lines of: thirty years ago if they were determined to buy something I'd have supplied them with an nice three channel Eagle 30 watt amp, two column speakers with maybe 5 small elipticals in each and some mic points in the pulpit, on the lectern and by the altar. Goose necks on the first two and a desk stand for the latter. It'd probably still be happily working now.

 

At my own church each Sunday I sit near a cabinet with four radio mic recievers, (only one is ever used) a goodness knows how many ways graphic equalizer, I suspect about 200W of amplification all fed to a number of cabinets around the church including places where nobody repeat nobody ever sits or has done in living memory! The only grosser waste of money was the pipe organ installed twenty years ago that needed £10,000 spent on it last year as it needed 'servicing'.

 

As Leslie Evershed Martin said when building the CFT 'It's terribly easy to spend other people's money'

Edited July 29, 2019 by Junior8

[James]

I feel like I need to make amends slightly for my rant...

 

I had been taking about some of the worst examples I was aware of, there are others that are particularly good which should be used as examples of good practice.

 

It was many years since I was last there but I still remember the Taizé church in France that is still my benchmark on how sound should be done in churches, absolutely faultless, crystal clear and almost completely invisible.

 

James

[Simon Lewis]

Remember the equipment was sold under the sale of goods act.It must therefore be fit for purpose.

Now the Consumer Rights Act, but the principle is pretty much the same!

[paulears]

It also doesn't cover this either, as it is not a consumer transaction, but a business one. Interestingly the argument here is that often equipment is eminently for for purpose, but the people running it aren't. I really cannot see any judge determining that a sophisticated, expensive, professional quality installation is not fit for purpose because the opening staff are not competent? Why would anyone think that this kind of kit should be capable of running itself?

[david.elsbury]

I’m with Paul on this one.

[OddSocks]

Why would anyone think that this kind of kit should be capable of running itself?

 

Because that's what they get told it will do.

I was at a church that was looking to upgrade it's sound and video equipment. The current system was a 16 channel analogue desk, with no one operating it, and a pc controlling the projection of song words on a screen. The inputs were 4 radio mics, though normally only one was used, and a music group consisting of an electric piano and drum kit and 4 microphones for vocalists.

The congregation usually numbered 50-60 with an average age of about 60. Despite a number of appeals no one wanted to run the sound system and only two were willing to run the screen.

 

They had had an company recommended to them by the Diocese, who at the insistence of the Organist / Music Director, were recommending a wireless digital mixer and also a wireless projection system. They were told that the digital desk could have compressors on all the inputs so no one would have to control the volume sliders, and that the installation company would provide a two hour training session that would make them experts in running the system.

In the end, and grudgingly, the organist and church council were told that they should talk to me, having been involved with sound systems in churches for many years, also personally running a digital desk for 18 years. During the discussion I pointed out that this system was well beyond what they needed and that the training was not going to make them experts as they struggled to operate / fault find on their existing system. I was told that the suppliers must know what they were talking about as they were experts and had been recommended to them. People did not seem able to grasp that they were sales men and that they had to make money.

The best response I had was that it must be the best as it was digital, this came from a lady who had her husband print out emails so she could read them. These are the people that are making the decisions.

 

[Junior8]

It also doesn't cover this either, as it is not a consumer transaction, but a business one. Interestingly the argument here is that often equipment is eminently for for purpose, but the people running it aren't. I really cannot see any judge determining that a sophisticated, expensive, professional quality installation is not fit for purpose because the opening staff are not competent? Why would anyone think that this kind of kit should be capable of running itself?

 

 

Quite right. I had forgotten that charities and non-profits were counted as businesses