Jack’s Take: Science & Snake Oil
by Jack Alexander

Is the church systems market plagued by charlatans whose primary motivation is making a buck?

Also be sure to read Doug Jones’ take on this issue. And note that while the good professors discourse on ethical issues related to church systems, we also would like to note that much of what they diagnose is common in many genres of the systems market. - Editor

Yes, its time for a few words on one of the “forbidden” topics — the church game, or as some would put it, “Sound System Design for Houses of Worship.” We’ve known this one was coming for a while, but it finally chose us when a Live Sound reader approached me at the recent AES convention, requesting that we direct our ray at this issue.

My Viewpoints partner Doug, as some of you may know, is a missionary kid — Moody Bible Institute, the whole drill. He avoids discussing religious issues around me (Lest there be any doubt, I have no problem with spirituality, though I do not personally participate in organized religion), but we share a relationship with a gentleman who is Doug’s reverend, and as close as anyone will ever get to be mine. For a number of years I have done sound at concerts for this fellow, who is an excellent singer/songwriter as part of his particular ministry. I have been impressed with the emotional atmosphere at these events, even if the rest of it is not my cup of tea.

Which makes me all the more incensed with the way that these good people are often ripped off. Well, not these particular people, because they’re fortunate to have Doug Jones as a protector and truthsayer in audio matters. Other religious organizations also have access to the (audio) truth, but many others (probably most) do not.

I could write a book about the variations on the church game I have experienced during my years as a loudspeaker company flack, and no, I won’t name any names here, though many in the trade know about parts of this and will connect the dots.

START AT SQUARE ONE
We should remember that church sound has been fundamental to the live audio business from square one — we can trace the history of third-octave equalization to Dr. (Charles) Boner and his hand-wound narrow-band filters (it was the only way to suppress feedback in those days), as well as Boner’s influence on the young Don Davis, who more or less gave us the one-third equalizer. When some punk with this week’s hair color and a set of carefully chosen occult/jailhouse tattoos sits down to tweak the monitors for his nightly house gig at the local death metal toilet, he would be surprised to know that his prized Klark-Teknik one-third equalizer comes originally from a bunch of crazy Texans in the 1950s trying to deliver the revealed word sans feedback.

Most live sound guys of a certain age even made an effort to assimilate Mr. Davis’s book, “Sound System Engineering” — quick, which page was that line diagram of the old Grateful Dead rig? The same book had a lot of equations that pushed many of us to seek other influences (crazed Brits for me). And that book in its various editions had pictures of “appropriate” products. Now they didn’t have room to show everything, but there were some obvious exclusions that made one, well, wonder. Definitely a lot of cool stuff was not included, and some very not-cool things were. In essence, this helped set the tone for the whole church installation racket.

Individuals, some more qualified than others, would set themselves up as the arbiters of what was (is) holy, and that was that. The whole thing came out of acoustics — make a nice room and pop a nice rig into it. Science drove the first part, and it made sense (to most, anyway) when those same scientists took control of the second. And for a long time, it kind of followed, before the live production culture and its hardware came into its own (say — the late ‘70s or so).

It became evident to the more production oriented of the faithful that their message (and musical context, hence the various forms of religious rock) had to be delivered with at least the same audio vigor as the leather-clad alternative. This threw the whole thing wide open, as the hot stuff was off-the-shelf product available to a wide range of installation vendors — no more hand-wound filters and custom homebrew line arrays formed from open-baffle bass cabinets and stacked multicellular horns.

EVERYONE WANTS IN
Suddenly, everyone was doing churches (same as when a lot of folks decided that they were doing corporate) — music stores, sound companies, contractors, acoustical consulting firms, rep firms, sales managers at speaker manufacturers, even musicians. Everyone knew a piece of how it was done, but few could deliver the whole package. Of course not everyone had the same technical or business (read moral) agenda.

They all played their best angle: Music stores worked price point, convenience (locals servicing locals), access to certain inexpensive product lines (though that’s opened up over the years), and usually had a staff member in the congregation who fed them the lead. The staff member would often be in the band, and/or mix the services. Music stores would also pitch the rental aspect: “go with us and whatever you can’t afford at any given time will be rented to you at a special rate,” etc., etc.

The fact that their specifications were limited to whatever they could get 120-day pricing on, that their installation staff consisted of the guitar repairman and his cousin who worked at Radio Shack, that their acoustical knowledge was of the egg carton variety, and their guarantee and maintenance were at best nebulous, often didn’t matter. They were local, and they were cheap.

Sound companies played the high-tech angle — “use us and you are in touch with the cutting edge of production.” The cutting edge often consisted of their least-experienced or most over-the hill-crew installing overpriced, antiquated and too-large touring equipment that had been fully amortized during the Pleistocene era.

Many of the contractors and consulting firms did indeed deal in truth — their truth, the truth of measurement and science — not production. Offended by what they considered Neanderthal rock ‘n roll practices, their science produced some mighty strange looking distributed systems running off of 70-volt transformers. Racks and wiring were of course immaculate, even if the rig usually sounded awful when pushed beyond 98 dB.

Rep firms would usually support the contractor or consultant, unless their competitor’s lines were specified. Then they would back the music store with special pricing and terms arranged with the shunned manufacturer, usually getting the loudspeaker company’s sales manager to do the pitch and run up the design.

Consultants played the documentation/measurement game — never mind that their pet analysis program used a form of averaging that rendered the polar response data essentially useless — it played well with the committees. And surprisingly, none of the loudspeaker manufacturers ratted each other out, though they all knew it was BS.

The architects loved the proof of performance data, even though it had little to do with the actual audible outcome of the events. These wonderful programs provided one-dimensional measurements of rooms and systems, but could not predict show outcomes with the house in and the mikes open. But by then the checks had cleared and the fund raising had begun for the next phase, and the carpetbaggers were on to the next deal. And there was that phone book of documentation, right, which proved that things were OK.

GETTING A REAL READ ON IT
Now we have programs (thoughtfully provided by the manufacturers) that spec the rig, the positions, the cable runs, and soon these will probably arrange pizza delivery for the install team. Everything tied up in a neat, well-documented bundle — except the sound, and sound is so messy and unpredictable, isn’t it?

I have some thoughts for those considering sound system installations at their houses of worship. Paper presentations mean nothing, for starters. Go to other houses of worship that are vaguely similar to your own real (or projected) physical plant and listen to an entire service. If you can understand the sermon, even from the furthest reaches of the room, and are moved by the musical presentation, find out everything you can about the install — who designed it, what was used, what they say it cost.

Track the same humans and “stuff” to other installs — the consulting firm and manufacturers will be glad to provide lists. If it all really seems to be working with some consistency, approach the consultant or contractor, hand over your prints, and request a bid based on the exact stuff you heard, with as few substitutions as possible.

Though your room won’t be identical, even with artful acoustical design, you will get a lot closer this way than by reading phone books of data from people who wouldn’t quantify production truth for you even if they could.

If you can’t afford the number at the bottom of the bid page, have them direct you to installations they’ve done that are within your price point. If there aren’t any, then go to regional sound companies with your dilemma and offer to do a three-month lease for a temporary system that could be purchased with your available resources should things work out. Those three months will give you adequate time to evaluate the rig’s performance, and will also serve to motivate the contractor — it sure is funny how numbers can change when that big fish slips away. The sound company will get their rental fee even if you don’t go with their bid, so everyone wins.

Do not buy based on advertising, documentation, testimonials, hearsay, religious preference of vendor, price, or your own weird prejudices. Go hear the stuff under load and base your decision solely on that. This will protect you from most of the hustlers who infest this business, and should help you avoid many unnecessary consulting fees.

Old Dr. Boner (who did do some really important work, as noted above) would walk into a venue, blow up a balloon, and release the thing, which would putt-putt around the space until its air supply was exhausted and the fall to the floor. He said he used this to sort out the RT60, or something like that. Maybe, maybe not. But he surely understood the theatre of the church game, and was probably more honest about it than most. Remember that the next time some sharpie drops a phone book of data on your desk.

Personally, I’ll take the balloons.

Jack Alexander instructs on topics allied to Performance Audio at Columbia College in Chicago. Reach him at jalexander@livesoundint.com.