When it comes to loudspeaker selection, size matters. Your worship space may be small, but that doesn't mean that you can install any old speaker system and achieve the desired coverage. The shape of the room, and your church's worship style, have a lot to do with determining which loudspeakers will be the right fit. And, if you're a portable church, you may not always congregate in the same facility, requiring your loudspeakers to be flexible enough to handle different environments.
There are also aesthetics to consider: in many facilities, it's preferable that the loudspeaker system remains as invisible as possible. “Aesthetics is a really big factor, especially, we're seeing, in smaller churches, so you're looking for something that's slim, that will blend in with the architecture, and potentially, has custom color options available,” says Mike Jonas, senior project manager at Clearwing, an audio, video, and lighting production and systems integration firm with offices in Milwaukee, Wis., and Phoenix, Ariz.
The Height Fight
Jeff Barnett, director of house of worship sales at Sweetwater, an AV, lighting, and musical instruments dealer based in Fort Wayne, Ind., notes that one of the most common issues with small worship spaces is ceiling height––or the lack of it. “The ideal place to put the speakers would be someplace high enough up above the congregation where they're going to get good, even coverage from the front row all the way to the back row, and more often than not, in a small church we can't place the speakers that high because the ceiling is too low to allow for it,” he explains. Some compromises: Barnett will recommend using multiple speakers throughout the venue, or a brand and model of loudspeaker that addresses these audio issues without breaking sight lines, “or we just accept the fact that it's going to be louder in the front than it is in the back.”
Speaker selection for facilities with low ceilings requires designers to do their homework, since these spaces generally can't accommodate line arrays or multi-box clusters––configurations that allow designers to use several different loudspeakers to achieve the required coverage––that would impede the congregation's view of the platform. “Rather than trying to design an array like I would [for] a large room, I look through the speakers [on the market] and try to find one where the horn geometry is the right coverage––60 degrees by 40 degrees of whatever [the case may be]–– that we need,” Barnett explains.
The Power of Powered
Live! Technologies, an AV production and systems integration firm based in Columbus, Ohio, works with a number of portable and mobile churches. David Meade, the company's founder, notes that these applications benefit from powered loudspeaker rigs. “There's only a certain amount of time for setup, and that's where the powered speakers have such an advantage over traditional, amplified speaker setups,” he says.
But like the term suggests, powered speakers require power. “Sometimes it is a problem to have as much power as we need in the places that we need it, and to have good clean power that is not shared with the air conditioner or the refrigerator in the kitchen next door,” Barnett says. In this case, the church must weigh the costs of bringing in an electrician to get power where it needs to be, versus purchasing passive speakers, in which case amplifiers can be located closer to where the power already is.
The Big Heavy
Barnett admits it may sound silly, but when choosing loudspeakers, portable churches should place great emphasis on . . . portability. “I've seen a lot of portable churches get systems that, while they're designed well and they sound great, they're just not practical to set up in a short period of time by a bunch of volunteers on Sunday morning,” Barnett observes. He urges portable churches to bear in mind that they are probably limited in both transport and storage space, as well as the number of people that are available to carry the speakers––people who would have an easier time during setup and tear-down if the speakers were lightweight. “Simpler is better––we try to do as much as possible with as few boxes and as few connections as possible.” He also notes that color-coding cables (I.e. red cable goes into red jack) helps volunteers and their supervisors to roll out a system efficiently.
And another somewhat obvious, but not always followed best practice for portable churches? “Anything that's big and heavy absolutely needs wheels,” Barnett says. This goes for big speakers, big equipment racks, big anything.
The Bit About Budget
Not all loudspeakers are made equal, and in a worship environment––no matter the size of the church––the demands placed on them require them to be professional-grade. While Jonas concedes that budgets may be tight, he counsels churches to be prepared to invest a little so that the result pays off. “It may cost more money up front, but sometimes it's better to wait and save up, or do fundraising, so that you can get the right solution that you're actually happy with, and that's going to last,” Jonas advises.
The Name Game
When we need to get a job done, we can usually think of a brand that will help us. Need a piece of cheap furniture? IKEA. Need something delivered quickly and reliably? Amazon. When it comes to speakers, however, our experts discourage churches from making their purchasing decisions based on brand names, even if they heard a particular brand of speaker somewhere else and it sounded great. “There are a lot of reasons why a sound system can sound good or why it can sound bad, and that involves everything from the operators, to microphone technique, to––yes––the speakers, and processing, and everything in between,” Barnett says. “You can buy the same brand of speaker and get terrible results because that's the wrong speaker for your room, or you didn't do all of the things that they did in the situation where you heard that good system.” He encourages churches to seek out someone who understands your worship style and your room, and who can base their counsel on what's best for your specific needs.
The Advancements
While column speakers have been around for quite a while, Barnett notes that the advancements manufacturers have made over the last few years have boded well for church applications. “Some of these speakers sound amazing, have very tight pattern control to keep sound off the ceiling and off the floor, and just aim [the sound] towards people's ears where it belongs, and have beautiful, full-range response,” he says. “The newer speakers really sound impressive.”
Remote-controllable DSP for loudspeakers––which enables operators to control digital signal processing from a smartphone or tablet––is another advancement that Barnett highlights as useful to church techs. And, when it's built into the speaker itself, it cuts down on equipment, which is especially practical for portable churches. “It's just one less thing you need to set up and tear down each week in a portable church. Any time you can eliminate gear from the list of things you need to carry, that's always great.”
