"The 8 Most Common Sound Problems and How to Fix Them" Video Transcription

Video Transcript: The 8 Most Common Sound Problem and How to Fix Them

All right, we're continuing on sound. This session, we're going to look at the seven most common problems with sound, and how to fix them. Jeremiah 12:43 Again, and on that day, they offer great sacrifices, rejoicing, because God had given them great joy. The women and the children also rejoice, the sound of the rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away now with our natural voices. That tone and quality of it is, well, it's dependent on the space is dependent on the person's personal voice about today, we can shape this sound. And unlike back in the day, we have some problems. And so I'm sure you've experienced some of those if you've been a worship for. And so how do you what are the most common problems and in how do we fix them? 

Number one, first common problem is not enough power. years ago, the power of an amp, which is rated in watts, even though they're called amps, was expensive power. So if you wanted a lot of power, amps cost a lot of money. So so sweet speakers were made really efficient, so that the speaker really didn't need a whole lot of power, I still have an old system 30 years ago, and it's 50 watts per channel and the speakers so wonderful, and there, they can be as loud as you want them to be. But speakers were made efficient, and power was small, but now powerful amps are relatively cheap. So amps have become a lot cheaper. So speakers are made more cheaply today, that's requiring a lot of power. Most churches do not have enough power for the speakers they're running, and the volume level they're running them at. So the result of all that is a lot of feedback and distortion problems. And the sound just doesn't sound very good. And and I mean, it will still work, you'll still get still have something you'll be able to hear the guitars and the piano and, and the singers and so on. But the sound never will be good. It'll be all these problems. And part of it is you just don't have enough power. So the fix, check the power rating on your speakers, every speaker says what its power rating is and then double it, when you're looking for a new amp you want way more power than than what the speaker actually requires. 

And then you don't have to use all that power, you can you can set the IP at half. And then you don't have all this distortion and feedback problem. That leads us to: 

Number two distortion problems, it might be the lack of power, or it might be that you're too high on the gain volume level for some or all the channels on your soundboard or your mixing or distortion is when you're talking and the speaker seems like it's cracking. And it's brick, the sound is just breaking up. I mean, guitar players like to play with distortion. And we've gotten used to that sound. But when you're singing and playing something that you don't want distorded, it doesn't sound very good. And I know, I know a lot of outdoor venues, you know, I've been to places in Indonesia and Malaysia, and especially in outdoor places I've been in Africa, and when there's an outdoor venue and there's hundreds and hundreds of people and then you have this small little sound system. People want to crank it as loud as they can. And you have this distorted sound, it's just like, you know, someone's yelling and in the sound is breaking up and it just sounds horrible. And you can hardly understand what the person is saying. 

Well, sometimes it's not the lack of power. It's just that one of those buttons on the on the individual channel strip, one of those buttons is just too high for the particular thing that you're playing. So the fix what's the fix the fix is what's called the gain control. Why is gain needed mics and sometimes the guitars have little amplification in themselves and need a boost. So if I'm speaking on this mic, it produces a little bit of volume creates a wave in and of itself, and then it creates an electric electric impulse of that wave and it goes to the mixer which goes to the amplifier but when it goes to the mixer, it has so little value that that you're making the AMP do all the work and so, what you do is on the mixer on that channel strip, there's there's a, it's called the gain. And so with the gain with a mic, you have to turn that gain quite high because the mic doesn't have a lot of volume. 

The problem is, when you, when you hook up like a keyboard or something in the keyboard actually can have a lot of power coming out of the keyboard, so then it goes into the mixer. And then you have that Gain knob that you had set pretty high for the mic, and now you have it set high for the guitar or the the keyboard. And now when you play the keyboard it starts distorting is it starts distorting because that gain control is way too hot. So the goal of the gain control is to go over each individual input and find out where, you know, high, low middle is the best for the overall sound. And the problem with like a keyboard is it has its own volume that it's sending to so you can adjust that. So you can adjust the keyboard volume, you can adjust the gain volume, then of course, you have the slider later on to adjust the volume, and then you have the total control over the whole board volume.

So there's all these different volume controls. And when they get out of balance, then you get distortion. So what you need to do is 

(2a) number one, turn down the volume level on the instrument. So you take the instrument and you don't want the instrument producing, you know excessive amounts of volume or ends up getting distorted. And 

(2b) number two, turn down the volume level on the gain control to to where it sounds pretty good. And then go to that, that, that that that slider on the bottom and see how much total volume you can get. And if you can get as loud as you want, then you've got the gain in the right place. But the goal is to turn that gain down as low as you can. If you have the gain way high, then when you turn the slider up, you get all this distorted sound. So a lot a lot of times, I know especially in outdoor venues, people just use that gain control like a volume control and they just crank it way up. And they just turn every volume lover that can go higher, higher, because they want more volume. But then the speakers break up and the sound is unintelligible I know it's loud. But people can't understand what's being said. 

Number three harsh sound or the harmonies don't blend it's, you know, as a singer, it's hard to sing, you know, when you go into a library, if you were to try to sing in a library, all these books absorb the ambience of the room when I when you talk into a regular room and it has hard walls, the sound waves are bouncing off the walls, and it's creating a little bit of delay. If you go into a shower stall, and it's all a ceramic tile, and when you sing, it's like wow, it feels like I'm in a cathedral. And in my voice is bouncing off all these walls and coming at me from every angle. And even if I'm not that great of a singer, it sounds pretty good. So a lot of people sing in the shower. But no one sings in the library, because the library is just dead. It just it's like a vacuum and it just takes the sound and sucks it right out of you. And if you're in a dead space, it's just hard to talk. It's hard to sing. And so sometimes with the soundboard you're singing and maybe the space the worship space has got a lot of chairs, it's got carpet on the ground. People have their, you know, their suits on or whatever and, and, and the sound just gets it doesn't it can't bounce off things. Maybe it's a low ceiling. 

Maybe there's ceiling tile in the ceiling and ceiling tile just eats up the sound. It doesn't bounce off the ceiling tile, and the sound is just dead. Right now I have on this. It's just dead. If I talk when I'm done talking it just it just dies. If I were to sing Amazing Grace, it just, it has no it has no feeling of wideness or bigness. It just it's just in it's very hard. It's very, you know, when I'm at a dead place and I'm just preaching it's just very wary. So what's the fix for this dead sound? the fix is what's called reverb and reverb is what happens when I talk and it bounces off the wall and it reverberates it keeps coming in waves and and it makes the sound last longer. Why is reverb needed? Most singers are a bit off with their pitch you know? 

Now am I dead on You know, if someone else is singing next to me and they're trying to sing the same note and they're just slightly higher or slightly lower, and even when I'm singing it, I'm not totally dead on, I'm just I might be a little flat, I might be a little sharp, like a little high, I might go a little low. So most singers are, you know, are a bit off with their pitch. And reverb sort of spreads out the pitch. It makes it bigger and a little more fuzzy, it's less, it's, it's less accurate. In a reverb place. With reverb, it's more forgiving. So you have people that are learning how to sing and they're trying to sing harmony. And if someone's just slightly off and there's no reverb, you hear it, you notice it, the the sound doesn't mesh and become one sound. It sounds like five people singing separate things, and it just doesn't blend together. To, It helps blend different voices into one sounds. You have four people singing harmony. And and it sounds like one thing, one big, huge voice that has all these different, you know, nuances to it. But that reverb it sounds harsh and it sounds like separate people and it just doesn't go together.

So how do you fix reverb? Now, yeah, let me show you that. Let me show you the reverb on this thing here. This is no reverb. This is reverb. This is a lot of reverb. Hello. See how my voice just keeps going? Hello. So that's too much. Now it sounds like we're in some Cathedral. And you can hardly understand the words. So you gotta back it up. Hello, hello. Hello. We don't have a good EQ here.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound. Now I feel like I have to work so hard at singing, I can sing soft Amazing grace, it is fun to sing when there's a little bit of reverb without the reverb. It's just A---ma--zing grace. Just dead and it's just hard. It's even harder to do it. So you know, people that are really good singers, you know, they can do it. They're dead on and it's fine, and they can make some song, regardless of river. But for most most situations, a little reverb certainly helps. 

Number four unclean words in the song or tin can sound or like the sound is distant, or a booming sound or a harsh ear splitting sounds. Something about this, the tone is just not right. It just doesn't doesn't sound very pleasant. So what's the fix? the fix is called EQ. And that's where we're dealing with the highs and the mids and the lows just like on a on a stereo system or your iPod, you can go into the EQ setting and you can you can like boost the highs or boost the lows. 

That's what a soundboard has honored as well. So why is EQ needed. All rooms absorb different frequencies and frequencies tell us whether a pitch is high or low. Okay, so if the if it's a fast frequency, the waves are going very fast, it's a high pitch. If the frequencies are going very big, then it's a low pitch. So rooms absorb these frequencies. But a room will absorb different frequencies at different rates. This room will absorb a lot of highs and this room will absorb a lot of lows. So your worship space is unique. And it will absorb some of the frequencies. So soundboards can add or take away certain various frequencies. Each channel strip will have at least three frequencies that it can can, can add be added or taken away. There's generally a high a mid and a low. Some churches will have what's called a 32 band EQ attached to the whole system so that the whole sound, you can adjust 32 different bands so it's not just low, such as low, mid and high. It's like low, a little bit more low, little, little, little, little, little, little 32 different frequencies from low all the way to high. And that way some rooms will have like, like to little narrow frequencies that sort of when you hit that note something everything starts shaking and reverberating and you can just eliminate that one out of 32 just bring it down. How to diagnose and fix sound problems with EQ. 

Okay, so here's, this is good to understand your sound, people should know these things. But as a music director, you should know these things too. So when you hear it, if the sound person doesn't adjust it, you can say something. 

(4a) Number one if the sound is not clear, but muddy and it's hard to understand the words and it's, it's dull. You know, like, as I'm speaking right now, this is very dull, amazing grace. I think the reverb off it's really doll. Hello, hello. Now if I take the high on the EQ, and I take it away, hello, hello. Hello. It gets even doller. If I add EQ, hello, hello. There it is. Hello. Okay. Hello. So here is sort of I have all the EQ knobs right in the middle. 

If I go down with the Hi Hello, hello. Hello. Now it seems even doll at some distance is far away, everything seems really dull. But if I add EQ Hello, hello. Hello. Do you know how it got clear? But now if I have too much, it sounds a little tinny doesn't it? It's like in too low sounds really doll too high sounds really tinny. So I have to sort of put it right in the middle. That's not too bad. If the sound is screechie, or harsh or pearcey that hurts your ears. That's when the highs to Hello. And if you had like five people seeing that it can actually especially when the women if the EQ of the women is high, it can actually hurt people's ears. So we turn down that a little bit.  And then 

(4c) number three, if the sound seems like it's coming out of an old speaker, or it's coming from a different room or distant, you've got a turn. Turn down the mids. Okay, so the mid is here. Hello, hello. Hello. If I turn the mids up, hello. Hello. It sounds it just sounds like it's coming out of some little box or something yellow. It isn't some good if we take the mids all the way out. That sounds very hollow. So if the mids are high, sounds like a box Hello, hello. Sounds like a cheap, you know, $3 speaker, we turn them it's totally off. And now it lacks any body. So let's add a little more. Like that's the next slide. If the sound is especially the voices lack warmth, then we want to add a little of the mids there feels a lot better. And then the low. If the sound is lacking depth or thump, then you got to turn the bass on. So here's the bass, the bass is totally up. Here's the bass, the bass is off. And it sounds a little bit hollow. If the bass is all the way on Hello, hello, now it has this kind of Bumi you know Hello, hello. It's too much if you tap turn it off, then it's it lacks some body. So then you have to find the right spot. 

Now, you can set these EQs perfectly for one room. And you're in that room and it sounds great. And then you move the sound system to another room and all that room. It doesn't sound good at all. So you really have to tweak these knobs. I think the the biggest mistake, at least that I hear is people don't have enough highs. The sound is it sounds like a different room. It's very dull. So highs have to go up. But highs have more tendency to create feedback if your speakers are in the right place. And so then people turn down the highs but then you know the words aren't clear that the sound isn't Chris. For me. The sound is like when it's right. It feels like the music is right here. And when it's wrong, it feels like the music is somewhere else it feels like it's coming from someone's cars is coming from another room. And then the same thing with the with the balance between the music and the singers, you know the voices and the music. When it's right you can hear all the instruments but it feels like the singers are right there. So sometimes what you hear is the the music is right we can hear every musical instrument but then the singers are in the distance. 

They feel like they're like they're behind the music. Or the the singers are so loud that you can't hear the difference. You can't even hear does that guitar player playing I can't hear a thing that the keyboard keyboards is doing. So getting that balance right? For the singers and the music, number five unclear distance sound like the sound is coming from another room. Which is could be a monitor, or it could be an EQ issue, but sometimes it's a monitor issue. The monitors are the speakers that that the singers and instrument instrumental is listen to what they're how they're playing.

But there's an escalation of sound off on a stage. A lot of times the guitar players will have their own amps so they can hear what they're doing. And of course, the drums might be on the stage and the drummer is playing, and they're loud. So then the guitar player wants to hear more of himself. So he turns his up. And then the other guitar player can't hear his because his is louder, so he turns his up. And then the singers can't hear their voices. So they asked that more of their voice get put in the monitor. Now their voices louder so than the guitar player can hear what he's doing. So he turns his up, and then the other guitar player turns his up. And then the singers can hear and after a while, after a few weeks, the sound on the stage is getting louder and louder and louder. And soon half the sound that the congregation hears is from the monitors bouncing off the front wall. And that sound is poor quality. 

So you have this monitor speakers pointing at the the band and the worship team. And they can hear, but it's going the opposite direction of the congregation, the congregation is over here. So it's coming to the singers, and then it bounces off the front wall of the sanctuary. And it goes back to the people. And it's this bounced off the wall sound half the sound that they're hearing is the bounced off the wall sound and that's not very, you know, it's distant sound. So the sound guy, I mean, what can he do? He can't crank the main speakers loud enough to get a nice clear sound, because half the volume is the monitors. So that happens in almost every band. And so what's How do you fix the monitor issue? The best solution is an in ear monitor system. This system is expensive, but it's coming down in price. Because of digital mixing boards, we have a digital mixing board now at our church, and these in ear monitors are I think they're a third of the price that they used to be the in ear monitor system, what it does is send a signal from the soundboard to the stage via cat five wire. So it's just one small little wire, it sends it, it sends the sound to a box that has 16 channels. 

And each person on the stage gets one of these boxes. And with these, with this box, each person on the stage can make their own monitor mix that is delivered to their them via earbuds, that's eliminating the notes on the stage. So our guitar player, he has 16 different channels, you know, one of them is the keyboard one is the singer one is that singer one is the drums one is this and one is him, and he can adjust the volume on all of that sound. So he is actually become a sound mixer a guy. And if he wants himself twice as loud as everything else, he can have himself twice as loud as anything else. It's up to him what he wants, and it goes to his ear and it doesn't go to anybody else. So if everyone on stage has one of these things, you don't need any monitors, there's no sound bouncing off the front wall going to the people. And 100% of what the people here in the congregation is coming out of the main speakers pointed right at them and the sound is pretty good. The next best solution is to get everyone on the stage used to less overall monitor on the stage. Everyone wants more. Everyone would like to hear themselves clearly.

But, but people have to get used to listening with less volume, especially those who have control over their own amps. So the guitar players they have to get used to listening to less. As a singer I got used to just hearing you know, out of the main speakers, I can certainly hear bounce off the wall, or you know what, you just have to sit once in a while if I can't hear myself, I just put my hand over my ear while I'm singing and, you know, especially a tight spot and I can hear myself. So you have to teach people to use less monitor. So we don't have this this weakening of the sound. 

Number five, when a single voice stance starts the song it this is a pet peeve of mine, when a single voice one person starts a song or maybe just a piano and the sound is really soft compared to when the whole band joins in. In other words, this song is going to start off with a little Piano intro. And what happens is some people will leave the piano volume at the same volume that the piano is at what everyone is playing, everyone is singing. 

So when everyone is playing and everyone's singing, the piano can't be, you know, let's say at this level, because everything you know it'd be at that level would be way too loud. So the sound people adjust all the singers, all the players and everything to this loud, and then you combine all the sound and it produces an acceptable volume. Okay, but now the next song starts out with just the piano player playing, that there's no singing, there's no other instruments, the drum isn't playing. And the only thing is the piano, in our ears, it'll sound really, really soft. If the piano was just left where it's always at, it will be really, really soft. If you listen to a CD, in, you know, in sound engineers when they mix and you know, make a CD for song. What they do when when a singer starts out or a guitar player starts out or, or you know, some small little thing starts up, they will boost that volume, that volume will be almost 80% of the total volume when everything else comes in. If it isn't, our ears say wow, this way too soft. So the piano, if it's coming, introducing a song, the sound, people have to boost up that volume. But now when the rest of the band comes in, they have to take it down. 

Or if there's just one person starting, you know, playing the guitar and starting the song, that voice has to be boosted up and the guitar has to be boosted up. And then when other things join in, you have to turn them down because the combined volume would be too loud. Now that's where compression comes in. There's there's effects that you can put on your songboard that actually will do that for you. In other words, you set the piano pretty high and the voice is pretty high. But when everything comes in, the effect will take the total volume and just push it down. And so when people make CDs, the reason why they sound so good, is because they have a lot of compression. So, so when the when when the CD gets really soft, it's never really that soft. So that's the fix, I guess I sort of went over that, how to fix the lack of volume issues. The soundboard operator has to temporarily boost or turn up the volume. Okay, I went over that. Making a CD compression. Okay, 

Number six, the last of the six problems and how to fix them. The overall sound is too loud, according to some people in the congregation and to soft others. that's a that's a problem all the time you're after the service, you're gonna have someone who would say, you know, it'd be nice, it was a little louder, and other people would say it was too loud. And then there's a few people in the relative say it was just right. The fix to this problem is to buy a sound meter or find an app for your phone that measures decibels. 

The average contemporary church service runs at not more than 95 decibels. A rock concert is at about 120 now rock concert hurts your ears. I mean, when I go I put something in my ear. I mean, I like it loud. You know, you feel the thump in your chest. And it's, you know, really cool. But you know, your ears are ringing the next day. So 95 95 still has quite a bit of volume. So people wouldn't like it that loud. But I'm just saying on average, that's what a contemporary church would run at. You can just tell people that you have a meter you know, some people, some people think that when you can hear a lot of bass that it's loud, but bass isn't really the thing that makes it loud. It's those highs that hurt your ears and when highs when the highs are really loud and harsh. That's what hurts your ears. mics Okay, 

Number seven mics, not on you know, this is a common problem but mics not on when a person sings or the solo instrument is not loud enough. The problem for the soundboard you have to understand the problem the soundboard person has is he's got you know, 16 24 32 controls, and he's a whole sea of people up there. There's five singers, okay, which Mike you know, unless the sound person hasn't labeled and he showed this on precision haven't labeled. We'll talk about that in the next session who's who. But it's hard to you know, unmute and who's coming in. And and so a lot of song people solve the problem by just leaving everything. Every mic every it's on no matter what. And then there's a lot of feedback issues. If a mic is just sitting on stage, and it's odd, it's going to pick up a lot of stuff and create a lot of trouble so it's good to mute it. But But then the sound person forgets to Do it. 

(7a) Number one, how do you fix that sound operator does not know the music well enough. Okay, so he doesn't know that the Solo is coming. And so when the solo comes, he just didn't turn the volume because the electric guitar is playing and he's, you know, just in the mix somewhere, but all of a sudden, he has to be a lot louder. Well, you know, they didn't notice that it was coming until it was too late. I should have marked a lead sheet so that the sound person really needs to be just like a regular person in the band, he needs to have his lead sheet with the music and the chords and he has to market you know, this is where it comes, he has to listen to the tape. If there's a tape recording of it, or come to practice and know the song. Yeah, he should know the sound person should know the song as well as the players and the singers are 

(7b) number two, the sound operator needs to clearly label each channel on the song board for every singer and instrument player. They know soundboard player, controllers will say, Oh, yeah, I know. He's number two, and he's number five. But in the heat of the battle in the middle of the song, they're not going to remember and they're there they got the headphones on, they're trying to find which one and by then it's it's too late. So those are the seven major problems and how to fix it. And I was saying you're gonna fix it as the music director, but the more you know about it, the more you can cut sort of keep your ears these are the common things. So watch out for them and look for them.