Every Sunday, we plug our acoustic guitars and electronic drums into a Direct Box.  This direct box then let's us plug the 1/4 inch cables into the XLR floor jacks because the direct box switches from a 1/4 plug to the always popular XLR plug.  In geek-speak, "line or instrument level unbalanced signals to low-impedance balanced signals."  Direct boxes run from a few dollars to a few hundred, depending on what's inside the box.   read more »

The first part of knowing how to run church audio is knowing the equipment.  In the simpliest form, a person sings into a microphone.  The microphone then sends the audio signal to the sound system.  The sound is then processed and amplified and sent out to the speakers which then turns the audio signal into sound waves.  Therefore, there are input devices, processing devices, and output devices.  This article covers the types of input devices.  read more »