unsplash.com; Victor Rodvang
Hip-hop has been making its presence forcefully felt in worship music in recent years, part of what some congregations consider necessary to engage younger church members. And those members know what the music is supposed to sound like.
Hip-hop is steadily making its way deeper into worship music. The trend has been in place for several years now, but new milestones are appearing regularly, most notably Kanye West’s recent elaborate worship-music event at Coachella. However one views the trend, it’s definitely putting renewed emphasis on the low end in sound-system design, including in churches that might not have felt they needed subwoofers or even those that already have them.
The Low Down on LFE
There are a number of system-design techniques that can help tame even high levels of low-frequency energy (LFE), including various flavors of cardioid subwoofer deployment, such as endfire cardioid arrays. (A cardioid subwoofer array essentially uses multiple subs positioned so that the output of one subwoofer will cancel some of the output of an adjacent subwoofer.)
Cardioid arrays are useful for controlling LFE in more confined spaces, and that also helps keep LFE out of vocal microphones.
Cardioid arrays are useful for controlling LFE in more confined spaces, and that also helps keep LFE out of vocal microphones. This becomes more important as better-quality microphones find their way onto church stages. Less-expensive dynamic microphones will have polar patterns that naturally reject much of the LFE in their area. But as higher-quality cardioid mics find their way onto stages, so does more LFE at the source.
Bring on the Subs
“In all my years of doing this, I’ve never heard anyone tell me there’s too much bass and to send some subs back,” says Ben Bausher, an associate principal at AV and acoustical consultancy Jaffe Holden. “But at the same time, there’s a functional limit to how much low-frequency energy you can put into a particular building or space. There’s just so much you can do at the system level — cardioid subs are a good solution, for sure, and there are some cardioid loudspeaker systems that are helpful for that, such as one that Fulcrum makes. But you want to deal with bass as much as possible at the source.”
"... you want to deal with bass as much as possible at the source." Ben Bausher, Associate Principal, Jaffe Holden, Norwalk, CT
Bausher says that includes specifying microphones that deal better with the widespread hip-hop and rap practice of “cupping the mic” — holding the microphone just underneath the basket that supports the capsule and pulling it right on the vocalist’s mouth, creating an almost sealed environment right around the transducer element which puts a lot of low end directly into the microphone. All of that gets sent right to the sound system.
Some of that can be rolled off at the mix console, but that assumes the FOH mixer understands how the low end of the sound is being overloaded. It’s why Bausher says having properly trained mixers at front of house is important, but since that can’t always be assured In the volunteer-rich milieu of house-of-worship AV, it’s best instead to try to offset it at the input on stage.
“That makes mic selection especially important,” he says. “Fixing it at the console, such as by setting high-pass filters on inputs appropriately, or even at the sound system level using cardioid subwoofer deployment, can be done, but it’s a lot less work and pressure on the sound mixer if it can be addressed as much as possible at the microphone. As the music [in church] becomes more intense in the lower frequencies, these are some of the ways to counteract the increases in low-frequency energy that come with that.”
Keeping it Tight
Higher-than-usual levels of bass frequencies are foundational for hip-hop music, and can be very effective during performances as long as the LFE remains coherent — what a musician might refer to as “tight”: percussive and with a very short tail after the initial hit. Ron Lorman, an independent consultant who has specialized in EDM systems, says typical house-of-worship spaces tend to be especially reflective, which can diffuse LFE, working against achieving a precision low end with uniform coverage.
... typical house-of-worship spaces tend to be especially reflective, which can diffuse LFE, working against achieving a precision low end with uniform coverage.
“Existing houses of worship can be hard to dampen acoustically, so you may have to use additional acoustical treatments to help solidify the low end, such as absorptive treatments like panels, curtains and carpeting, along with proper system time alignment across the frequency range, which gives timing definition to the low end ” he suggests. “Due to space restrictions for additional sub locations, one possible solution is to fly the subs along with the main PA when using line arrays.”
“Due to space restrictions for additional sub locations, one possible solution is to fly the subs along with the main PA when using line arrays.” Ron Lorman, Independent Consultant, EDM systems specialist
Not every church is going to need performance-level LFE reproduction. In fact, even some that rely on contemporary worship music can get by very nicely with full-range PA systems. But hip-hop has been making its presence forcefully felt in worship music in recent years, part of what some congregations consider necessary to engage younger church members. And those members know what the music is supposed to sound like. In this case, authenticity involves well-managed subwoofers.
