Shoreline Church
Shoreline. That one is in Toronto. I, on the other hand, am referring to a church in Austin, Texas. A megachurch. Somewhere around 8,000 or so people attend each week.
My friends at Avid invited me to a webinar with a couple of the production staff and Brown Note Productions to learn about their complete production workflow.
Not really all that complete mind you. The webinar focused primarily on how Shoreline was using Avid products for their audio production.
The session was posted to YouTube and if you are interested you can give it a look.
What stood out from the discussion for me was how much money that church had invested in their audio production. For example, this was a shot of their broadcast room:
Acoustically treated room. Beautiful desk. And what else do I see there? Might those be a pair of Barefoot MicroMain 27s? A fully decked out S4? An Avid Matrix?
Equipment and buildout costs were not mentioned however a room like that would easily exceed $500,000 in Canada.
The topology of the audio environment that was shared on the webinar looks like this:
They have an S6L-32D for FOH and an S6L-24D for monitors along with the S4. A couple of E6L engines, a 24×24 IO for the broadcast space and a Stage 64. The FOH and Monitor consoles, along with the engines, would run about $400,000 up here in Canada. Without installation costs and all of the related cable plant. Not hard to envision a couple of million for that installation not including the rest of the FOH, lighting, and video components.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love to mix behind an S6L or an S4. But that is some serious money for a church to spend on audio.
Definitely state of the art.
Blame the Sound Person
Pity the poor sound volunteer. Often pressed into service to do the seemingly impossible: make everything sound good.
If it sounds bad? It’s their fault.
If it sounds too loud? It’s their fault.
If it sounds too soft? It’s their fault.
The switch to livestream made an already challenging role even more challenging. Many churches do not have the resources to hire experienced audio people. And fewer still can run two mixes, one for in-person and one for the livestream.
Even if they do, the basics around acoustic treatments and proper monitoring systems for the livestream mix can be left out due to cost or space constraints.
And when it is apparent that the livestream doesn’t sound very good, who gets the blame?
You guessed it.
The poor sound volunteer.
I’ve done numerous seminars over the years. And I’ve trained hundreds of sound volunteers. For the most part, they are all good servants wanting to do nothing more than to help. The same basic elements that can help improve sound still apply: decent equipment, workable listening environment, appropriate skills and training.
Larger churches will usually invest in good equipment. And many of them will treat the listening space — whether in-person or the mix room for the livestream. Those churches that can will have a staff role for audio production and that person will develop the volunteers.
For small to mid-size churches it can be hit and miss. Budgets for audio systems may be limited. Listening spaces may be less than optimal. And the lead audio person might be the individual who raised their hand to help without the benefit of a lot of audio experience or training.
Is it worth the effort to improve the quality of sound for a livestream? Does it really matter?
In our technological age, production has become a thing for churches. This is a relatively new development and it is unclear to me whether worship is more or less geniune because of the level of production. My take is that we should always do our best whenever we gather — in-person or online.
One thing is very clear though. Bad sound gets noticed. As does good sound. Just not in the same way. Bad sound is distracting.
Here are some examples from a training seminar I did a few years back. It takes you from highly polished livestreams to, well, let’s just say, less polished livestreams.
These examples attempt to show the variance in audio quality in church livestreams. My voiceover shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Each clip shows people expressing their worship. Regardless of the quality, ultimately it is the heart that matters most.
New Guitar Days are the Best Days
Too many guitars? Impossible. That’s like saying too many pieces of art. There is always room for one more.
Well, no, I do not need any more guitars. Except the one that is getting picked up today.
I am blessed with a wonderful collection of guitars that I have built up over almost 50 years of playing. And I hope to continue playing for many more years.
I will be serving in Florida for a few months at the end of this year and I do not want to use any of my existing guitars. For better or worse they are either too valuable or too cherished for out of country gigs.
I’m picking up a PRS S2 Vela. It is not a student level guitar nor a premium high-end guitar. Something in the middle. A good value for the money type of guitar of which there are many choices in that price band.
If it gets damaged or stolen, I won’t be too upset as it would be easily replaced.
I may keep it or I might sell it once I get back to Canada.
My first offset guitar and certainly a unique tone stack. Looking forward to playing it later today.
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
Never good enough. Three words that I should have left behind me many, many years ago.
Those three words have been with me through my school years, my work years, and with literally every activity I have pursued in my life.
Even now, as I officially enter my senior years, I live with this fear, this fear of never being good enough.
I suspect most musicians carry at least some of this fear with them whenever they play for an audience. Particularly when it is so easy now to compare yourself with others. I can go online and watch countless videos of guitar players ripping and shredding at a level that seems superhuman. It can often be very discouraging when you believe that you will never measure up.
Perhaps what I suffer from is the Imposter Syndrome.
Imposter syndrome, also called perceived fraudulence, involves feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence that persist despite your education, experience, and accomplishments.
This is how Healthline describes the syndrome:
Imposter feelings represent a conflict between your own self-perception and the way others perceive you.
Even as others praise your talents, you write off your successes to timing and good luck. You don’t believe you earned them on your own merits, and you fear others will eventually realize the same thing.
Consequently, you pressure yourself to work harder in order to:
– keep others from recognizing your shortcomings or failures
– become worthy of roles you believe you don’t deserve
– make up for what you consider your lack of intelligence
– ease feelings of guilt over “tricking” peopleThe work you put in can keep the cycle going. Your further accomplishments don’t reassure you — you consider them nothing more than the product of your efforts to maintain the “illusion” of your success.
Any recognition you earn? You call it sympathy or pity. And despite linking your accomplishments to chance, you take on all the blame for any mistakes you make. Even minor errors reinforce your belief in your lack of intelligence and ability.
Over time, this can fuel a cycle of anxiety, depression, and guilt.
Living in constant fear of discovery, you strive for perfection in everything you do. You might feel guilty or worthless when you can’t achieve it, not to mention burned out and overwhelmed by your continued efforts.
Sadly, I think it is too late for me to do anything about it other than to cut myself a bit of a break from time to time.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
What The Cool Kids Play
Fender. A brand that dominates the global guitar marketplace. That market for guitars is estimated to be somewhere around $4 Billion. Fender is a private company so it is a bit of a mystery in terms of their financial performance. But they have been around since 1946. They own and license the following brands: Fender, Squier, Gretsch, Jackson, EVH, Charvel, Bigsby, Guild, Sunn Amps, SWR, Tacoma, Kaman and Presonus.
Andy Mooney has been the CEO of Fender since 2015. He came from Disney Consumer Products.
Servco Pacific is the majority owner of Fender.
Which is really a bit odd.
Servco’s business areas include automotive distribution, automotive retail and, er, guitars. The company is headquartered in Hawaii (which must be nice) and became involved with Fender as a dealer of its products in the 1950s.
They were part of the investor group that bought Fender back from CBS back in 1985. From literally a two-car garage operation in 1919 to a multi-billion dollar business in 2022, Servco is one of those businesses that few know and owns arguably one of the most recognizable brands in the music industry.
Anyway, all that to say this: Fender seems to be the guitar for the new bands coming up. At Coachella this year, most of the lineups were playing Fender.
And offset guitars, like the Jazzmaster pictured above, seemed especially prominent.
Way back when I first started, Gibson and Fender were the brands to own.
You remember Gibson guitars, right?
Why Is Church Sound So Bad?
It was the worst mix that I have heard in a church in a long time. And I have heard some bad mixes. But this one was loud and not in a good way. The harsh, distorted mid-range penetrated the ear drums like a sharp knife. So, so unpleasant.
I’m on a bit of a hiatus from church production and worship. The pace of the past two years took a toll and with no shortage of other audio work coming up in the next few months, I needed to take my foot off the gas and take a break.
Quality of sound has always been a thing for me. What I have noticed in those churches that are following the current trend of full bands on stage — drums, bass, electric guitars, keys — is that they seem to place more emphasis on the visuals and lighting and not always on the quality of the sound.
Livestreams have made it pretty easy to hear whether there is an emphasis on good quality audio. In the city where I live, most of the large churches provide very poor audio quality. In-person venues are often hit and miss.
Yesterday we were at a church where the house level was very much on the high side for a church. Peaks approached rock concert levels. Except that the mix was all over the place in terms of balance. It was harsh. Very harsh.
The human ear is particularly sensitive to audio in the 2 – 5 kHz region. Strident levels in that range hurt. When a mix is not balanced properly, loud sound is not a proxy for good sound.
This was a church that had clearly invested in its audio, lighting and visual system. The room was well treated and acoustically tight. More like a movie theatre than the all too typical highly reverberant church auditorium.
Why did it sound so bad?
There are three core elements to getting good sound in a live situation: the equipment, the room, the sound person. For most churches it can be a combination of the three that causes the sound to be off.
Often it is in the hands of an inexperienced volunteer to do the best they can under very challenging circumstances. At that point, even good equipment and a treated space may not help produce a good sound.
Side Effects
Took the COVID shot on Thursday and definitely feeling the side effects from the injection. Headaches, fatigue, lightheaded. Should pass in a day or two.
On my job jar is to integrate my new monitoring system into my production workflow but I’m not feeling well enough to go at it full throttle.
The Audeze LCD-X phones arrived on Thursday.
I use Canopener and SoundID and I was able to get SoundID calibrated for the new phones — very quick and easy. Although the LCD-X phones seem very flat and revealing out of the box, SoundID pushed them just a bit further along.
Canopener is a crossfeed plugin which I have used before when mixing through headphones. It is a neutral plugin and the combination of the two plugins seems to be the way to go. I haven’t had a chance to work up some sessions yet using that combination.
Once I get back to feeling normal I will give it a try.
New Monitors
How to mix loud and proud in a condo suite? That is a bit of an issue.
I sold off most of my studio gear when I retired a few years back. We now live in a condo. It is a very nice space but certainly not the ideal location for building out a critical listening room.
I have a 10×14 room with some panels on the wall and a pair of Focal Solo6 Be monitors.
The rig looks like this:
I have zero issues with most of the usual mix activities: prepping and organizing session files, editing tracks and cutting rough mixes. I make pretty heavy use of reference tracks for testing portability and for that I have to jump into headphones for balance especially in the low end. The Focals claim to get down as far as 40Hz but in the listening space I don’t get much below 70Hz. And when I say I don’t get much, I am down somewhere around 10-15 dB by the time 60Hz rolls around.
Likely the room. I’m probably in some kind of null. It’s like someone turned off the bass.
Headphones are the only way for me to check the low end.
But now I am getting asked to deliver Atmos mixes.
What to do?
I can’t readily fit a 7.1.4 system in this space and I certainly don’t want to invest the capital needed to treat the room to an acceptable level. I’m not even sure that I could.
More and more mixers are using headphones not only for the Quality Control but to do most of their mix activities particularly for Atmos.
I have been using a pair of AKG K702 Reference Headphones and they have been okay. With new projects on the go I decided not to spend the money to update the room and add a bunch of speakers.
Rather I will update the headphone monitoring system.
After a lot of research I decided to go with the Audeze LCD-X phones along with the software to provide cross feed for the stereo mixes. For Atmos I am using the Dolby Renderer which doesn’t require the cross feed processing.
I’ll still be checking the mixes on a variety of playback devices but looking forward to mixing with the Audeze phones.