My pastor was giving the sermon and he was totally "in the zone."  Then it happened.  Stepping to one side of the podium, his foot snagged a microphone cable.  He didn’t fall but his train of though was broken...by one lousy cable. If only something could have prevented this...  read more »

Cell phones buzz, ring, sing, tell jokes, and play a variety of audio when someone calls.  Cell phones can be set to vibrate.  They can be set to silent.  And they can still broadcast a signal that gets picked up by the church audio equipment.

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I was visiting a church to check out their Aviom system and noticed the funniest thing.  An Aviom unit (personal monitoring system) was close to the front of the stage and had a long cord leading into the first row of the congregation.  Unless a musician was going to play from the congregation, I couldn’t imagine why it was there.  "We use it to power headphones for a person who is hard of hearing."  read more »

I was thinking about all the types of wall treatments for dealing with sound absorption.  In short (article coming soon), a room can have hot spots and cold spots where sound either appears super loud or very quiet if standing waves exist due to sound wave reflection.   read more »

The one instrument that will tell you if you really are too loud.  read more »

Do you use headphones when you mix sound?  Many times, headphones are not used or used throughout the whole service.  Find out what works the best.  read more »

A DI unit, DI box, Direct Box or simply DI is an electronic device that connects a high impedance line level signal that has an unbalanced output (a.ka. a piece of equipment) to a low impedance mic level balanced input, usually via XLR connector. DIs are frequently used to connect an electric guitar, electronic piano, or electric bass to a mixing console's microphone input.

The DI performs level matching, balancing, and either active buffering or passive impedance bridging to minimize noise, distortion, and ground loops. DIs do not perform impedance matching.  read more »

Headphones, In Ear Monitors (IEM's), Earbuds, it doesn't matter what you call them, the odds are they are used at some point during the church worship time.  They might be used by the sound board operator.  They might be used by worship team members.  They might be very dangerous!  read more »