Friday, April 13, 2007

Sometimes It Is Better Than You Think

I was reading Dave's post Everybody's A Critic of Going to 11 based on Perry Noble's post Dealing With Critics... and it got me to thinking of how blessed I have been over the past couple of years to not hear of something being too loud or just plain not sounding good in one of our venues. As a church we call it the Christian Outreach & Activity Center which is basically a gym with a stage on one side. A big block building with horrible acoustics is what it is to me. As we outgrow our Sanctuary this room is being used more and more. I have had to do some serious reconfiguring of the sound system. I have not had the luxury of replacing equipment so a re-installation was my only option. However I have purchased in addition two portable speakers for a couple of pole mounts for better coverage and a whole package of Shure microphones and cables. Other than that is was a total rewire and optimization. One immediate move was to take the amplifiers off the same electrical phase with the horribly installed lighting system. I have heard noise from dimmer packs but this was unbearable and they had used it like that for years!

So over the past couple of years I have been accomplishing a rework of this sound system. A couple of weeks ago it was finally at a position whereas I thought it may sound decent. I was not happy with the sound and I'm still not (I'm a perfectionist) but after a recent choir cantata (yes, we still do those) a gentleman that operated sound for 15 years in that church come running back to FOH with a big smile on his face and shook my hand and told me that it was amazing how it sounded in that room now. I was really pushing that system on the finale and God made it stick. Folks I didn't do much and I did it with nothing but I believe that if we are putting forth the effort to make better with what God has given us that He will bless that. And even though it is not a new state of the art installation that you read about in all of these magazines it is probably a whole lot better than you think.

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