Three minute reads for audio engineers and music makers

By Thomas Dulin

Hey Reader, here's this week's Take Three email.

TAKE ONE: QUICK LINKS

• People are betting on Spotify charts and it's causing an influx of stream-manipulating bots. via Fader​
• The 4 new Mac computers planned for release later this year, via Production Expert​
• ​This article explores the best free pitch correction plugins currently available.

TAKE TWO: RECENTLY

This past week I got to do two totally different things, both of which I LOVE. I got to --
​
1) Co-produce, write, and engineer for 2 days at Fame in Muscle Shoals, AL and
2) Train volunteers and dial in systems for a church outside Memphis, TN.

TAKE THREE: THREE FASTEST WAYS TO ELEVATE YOUR CHURCH'S SOUND

During the pre-visit call for the training I did this past weekend, the worship leader told me he was most hoping to get their IEMs sounding better.

I had a feeling during the call, counterintuitively, that the way we were going to achieve that was by tuning his PA. That turned out to be true.

After seeing hundreds of church audio setups in the last decade, several patterns have emerged. So if I'm asked for the fastest ways to level up the audio for a church, these are the three I'd suggest looking at.

1. Fix your gain structure.

Proper gain structure is commonly the #1 lever that improves the most things at a church. It's seriously difficult to overstate how helpful it is.

FOH faders are easier to ride, monitor mixes are easier to adjust, and broadcast/stream mixes are representative of the FOH mix (some churches I visit get rid of their "broadcast" mixer altogether after we fix their gain structure!).

If you have faders on your desk that are at -20dB and your volunteers are nervous to adjust gain, you're due for a hard reset.

2. Do a line check before you rehearse.

I see this so often. Musicians will show up early on a Sunday and feel so rushed that they "dont' have time" to do a proper line check.

Then they'll get derailed halfway through their rehearsal because of a technical problem that could have been easily identified and solved with a simple line check.

Take 5-10 minutes to verify every single input (and set preamp gain!). That time will payoff, I promise.

3. Tune your PA.

Commonly, whoever installs a PA at a church will do an initial tuning, but they'll optimize it for spoken word or for a "flat" response, or they'll just use a preset EQ curve in their processor.

This past week, the PA I mentioned needed a lot of EQ to sound natural. And to compensate for that, the volunteers had been adjusting channel EQ on everything. Those drastic EQ moves were being fed to the IEMs and making it difficult for the musicians to hear themselves.

I also see a lot of guesswork around level and timing, so you get seating areas where it's difficult to hear, or others where everything is way too loud.

If you haven't had a fresh tune on your system in more than 2 or 3 years, block an afternoon and start over on it.

Until next week, happy music making, Reader!

PS - I love reading your replies. If you made it this far and have specific questions about your church's audio setup, hit reply and ask. I'll make it a point to reply to every one.

Thomas Dulin Producer / Engineer / Mixer