Doug’s Take: Science & Snake Oil
by Doug Jones

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

Also be sure to read Jack Alexander’s 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

I recently received an e-mail informing me that a church I’d been communicating with had decided to spend more than $15,000 on a consultant who would be designing a PA system and a lighting system, as well as fixing the acoustics of the church gym/general purpose room. This, I guess, is no big deal, although I found it a bit unusual because this is not a huge church with deep pockets.

But there is more to the story. A month or so earlier, I was contacted by a member of the church – a guy who happens to be in the audio business – asking me if I would consult on fixing the acoustics in the gym/general purpose room. It is just too loud, and therefore can’t be used for much of anything. My response was “hey, come on, if you put any type or any amount of ‘fuzz’ (or as Russ Berger would say, ‘dead cats’) in the room, it will get better. Why pay me to tell you the obvious? If your church is going to re-do the sanctuary, let me know, but there is no point in bringing out the ‘big guns’ for a gym. It needs absorption, so add some.”

I figured that would be the end of it, but a week or so later, my contact relayed back that the church committee did not believe him, and could I please put my comments in writing for review? Realizing that if you give away advice it is worthless, I said I would write a letter and consult with him on the gym for a nominal fee. He replied that the church had already received a bid from a consultant for more than $6,000 to specify a fix for the gym!

So I wrote my letter and figured that the church would thank me for my generosity. We’d fix the gym with dead cats, and I would someday get a gig with the church to expand their sanctuary system. This tack has worked for me many times over the last 20 years. Instead I got the aforementioned e-mail. I’m sorry, but this is just wrong even though I know that this is going to be an unpopular position.

ETHICS IN PRO AUDIO?
In the United States of America, the most sacred of all cows is the right to make as much money as you can, from whomever is gullible enough to part with it. Ethics, it seems, have no place in capitalism. But I guess it’s time for someone to raise the question: is there a place for ethics in professional audio? I certainly hope so. The above story is actually true. Some of the facts have been changed to protect the guilty, and the sad part is that this is not the first time that I have seen consultants take advantage of gullible clients.

At this point some of you may be asking “what’s wrong with that? If the customer needs a service and there is someone who can provide it, let the market determine the cost. That is capitalism.” True, but is there a point where capitalism needs to be held in check?

The public is generally outraged when press reports detail what the military spends on common widgets. It seems that in our collective sense of right and wrong, there is some sort of line. If the line is crossed, it seems wrong. Maybe if I break down the costs of this sort of job, lifting the veil of secrecy for a moment, you will see what I mean.

COST ANALYSIS
Let’s say I was called to consult on a gym in Madison, Wisconsin. I pick Madison because, from my home base in Chicago, it’s a long drive for me (about three hours), but not quite far enough away to justify flying. In this example, let’s also state that I charge $200 per hour, portal to portal. (I don’t work this way, but many do.). So three hours driving to the gig, three hours driving back, at $200 per hour. That’s $1,200 for my time in the car!

Arriving at the project site, I grab a cup of coffee and take a look at the room. Here is the point where I have some choices.

1) I tell the client, “O.K. here’s what you do. Put some dead cats there, there and there, and that’ll solve the problem.” You see, I can charge $200 per hour because I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve done hundreds of gyms, and they’re all are about the same – big, with a long enough Mean Free Path to support a true reverberant field, at least in the mid-frequency range, that can be treated statistically. They are made up mostly of hard surfaces with no absorption at all, although often there is a reasonable amount of diffusion. Dead cats work real well.

Cost of approach 1:
Six hours drive time - $1,200
One hour on site - $200
One hour writing report - $200.00
Postage - $0.37
TOTAL - $1,600.37

2) I can be a bit more analytical, whip out my sonic measuring tape and my laptop to calculate the volume and surface area of the room. Using some program or database, make a rough guess of the total absorption present, and run some numbers. I would look at the calculated reverberation time (RT) and compare that with my subjective impression. There usually is agreement. I would then decide on a target RT and run the numbers to find the total amount of absorption needed to reach that target. The answer, of course, is to add dead cats.

Cost of approach 2:
Six hours drive time -$1,200
Two hours on site - $400
One hour writing report - $200
Postage - $0.37
TOTAL - $1,800.37

3) I take the big-gun approach, go out to the van and lug in a bunch of gear. Using my trusty Terrasonde or TEF 20, or maybe both for even more confidence in the results, I measure the room to within an inch of its life. I generate dozens of graphs showing in fine detail the existing reverberant field. I then fire up my favorite modeling/auralization software, model the room, see if the numbers in the model compare to the measurement numbers taken earlier, place some dead cats in the model and watch the virtual room get better. Net result: add dead cats.

Cost of approach 3:
Six hours drive time - $1,200
Four hours on site - $800
Six hours “design time” - $1,200
One hour writing report - $200
Postage - $1.50
TOTAL - $3,401.50

In my view, approach 3 is a total rip off. This is a gym, not an auditorium or a theater or a sanctuary or any other space that requires critical listening. It is a space where folks want to play, hold banquets and the occasional pep rally. Therefore, it is very difficult for me to see how one could charge $3,400 (let alone $6,000!) for a spec to fix gym acoustics!

Note that I would have to more than double the time at the site, or add another person, to increase the cost of approach 3 to $6,000. And don’t forget that the results (and the specs) generated with these three approaches are all going to be roughly the same. If they’re not, I don’t deserve to charge $200 per hour. Doesn’t this seem to cross the line?

IS IT ALL A RUSE?
There is another aspect: this is a church. I know I’ve just entered dangerous ground here. Those of you who are religious will start saying, “preach it brother;” those of you who are not will attack me as being yet another religious hypocrite or worse. But please hear me out. I believe that there is a difference between doing business with a church supported by sacrificial giving and working with International Widget Company Inc., which can always crank out more widgets.

It is unethical to overcharge anyone, but in my view, it is more unethical to rip off churches. A business exists to make a profit by selling a service or a product. And although some of the larger organized churches look a lot like businesses, they really are not. They are providing a service that is different than selling a widget. Religion is a spiritual quest, not an intellectual or physical one. There is little that is tangible. In most (if not all) religious structures, the work of the organization is supported by voluntary donations to the cause. I can think of no religious group that would withhold spiritual guidance or counsel if the “client” doesn’t pay.

Now the cynic may say that this is all a ruse to get the weak to part with their money. The faithful say that religion is the most important thing in their lives, and they give sacrificially to support it. I am not able to tackle that issue within the pages of LSI. But remember that most religious groups have significant social impact on their neighborhoods. I wonder where our tax base would be if there were no churches carrying at least part of the burden of dealing with social needs.

I hear the cries of “do you know how many churches have defaulted on their loans and ripped off sound contractors?” Yep – I sure do. I too have been the victim of “religious” organizations trying to rip me off (and sometimes succeeding). But the fact that a certain group has hurt me does not give me license to return the hurt. Society cannot survive without some sort of ethical standards. I would argue that those standards need to be based in something – but that is a different question. There are cultures based solely on revenge and retribution. These are not, in the main, successful societies.

I am asking for a dialog about ethics in our business. In all the years I have been doing this, I cannot recall a single seminar or paper presented on the topic. True, we are not physicians. Folks don’t die from bad sound systems or overpriced consultants or bad mixes (thank God). But does this mean we don’t need ethical standards? If this column doesn’t cause you to stop and think, at least for a bit, it’s your choice. But if it does, and you want to e-chat about it further, contact me at the e-mail address below.

Douglas R. Jones is the Chair of the Sound Dept. at Columbia College in Chicago. Reach him at djones@livesoundint.com.