On Sunday, April 17th thousands of churches worldwide will present their annual Easter productions. Performance additions will range from simply adding additional musicians onstage to elaborate, professional-caliber theatrical events. For many of them, the wireless microphones used for every service during the year are called on to perform flawlessly for much larger congregations. Special events can also require extended presentation space where wireless performance is needed in parts of a sanctuary not typically used on most Sundays, and some churches will add a dozen or more additional channels of wireless for more robust productions that may run for a week or longer.
AV Systems integration firm HouseRight in Lexington, Kentucky uses RF Venue antenna and RF communications products for this challenge. “When it comes to RF management, our perspective is always that no matter the size of the venue or the event, the key is that the wireless audio always be reliable and free of distractions,” says Zach Lahm, Senior Solutions Engineer at HouseRight. “In fact, wireless audio is so important to all house-of-worship sound that we make sure that RF management is part of the conversation from the very beginning of a project.”
Lahm points out that dropouts – always the main gremlin of wireless audio – are a challenge for any church service, including those done online, where much worship had to migrate during the Covid pandemic. But even more perniciously, dropouts will also become part of the archived sound for services that are recorded for later playback. “They’ll be there forever then,” he warns. Thus, when his church clients prepare for special events, he'll recommend additional RF management systems be put in place. “Additional musicians or vocalists, or more presenters, means more channels of wireless microphones, so we have to enhance the RF management to accommodate the additional channels,” he says. “That could mean temporarily installing extra antennas, such as the RF Venue Diversity Fin antenna, in other areas of a church where the production might extend to where they wouldn’t normally need RF coverage, such as a lobby,” he explains. “Then, depending on the number of additional RF channels, we’d also deploy a DISTRO4 distribution amplifier that distributes diversity RF and DC power across up to five wireless microphone receivers. And if they need IEMs, we can go to the RF Venue CP Beam Combine8 package, a wireless distribution solution for up to eight channels of in-ear monitoring. RF Venue has a solution for every scenario we might encounter for special events, and we rely on them for that.”
Lahm says wireless signal dropout issues faced by houses of worship can be effectively eliminated with the unique remote antenna systems available from RF Venue. The company’s Wireless Microphone Upgrade Packs and In-Ear Monitor Upgrade Packs are designed to improve wireless reliability and include all the cables and hardware necessary. RF Venue upgrade packs work with all wireless mic and monitor systems, regardless of brand, with no tuning or adjustments needed. And for combating high interference levels, Lahm suggest churches plug in RF Venue Bandpass Interference Filters to mitigate interference from LED lighting, video walls and 5G cell phones.
More information is available at rfvenue.com.
