He let me know that he was the new worship pastor, and that he had a problem with the sound system. When pastors get to new churches, they often need new equipment. That's generally a good thing for us.
I asked him to take me on video "tour" of the new facility, so he whipped out his iPhone and we talked as he walked me around the room. The church had a system already, it was installed well, and the room had the right acoustical treatments in place, but the system sounded bad.
Then he walked me back to the mixer. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Wiring maybe? Improper wiring polarity (+/- inversion) can create phase cancelation, but I wasn't sure how I'd have him test for that easily, and North Carolina makes for a long service call. I do need a vacation. Hmm...
The short story is that I noticed that he had a system processor (equalizer, compressor, crossover). I asked whether he had could access the settings, and he could. He emailed me the file, I looked at it and described back what I thought the system sounded like, based on the settings. "Hollow?" Yes. "Muddy?" Yes. "Lack of presence in voices?" Yes.
So I got to work. With caution, I changed the crossover point and slopes, along with some changes to equalization. I made sure that he saved the original file (and I did, too), in case I made a worse mess of things. And then I emailed the file back to him.
I didn't hear from him Monday after the first Sunday and forgot about it the rest of the week. I didn't hear from him after the next Sunday either. I thought that maybe that was a good sign, but I did make a note to call him. And then he emailed me.
"Dave, Thank you so much for that work you did on that processor file. It sounds awesome. 150% improvement."
That made me smile.
Sometimes, we can make a quick change like we did for my friend in North Carolina. Other times, we can recommend a high impact product like a great earset microphone for your pastor, or a system processor that will help you set up your system on your own.
If you're having issues, please call us. Real people answer the phone at 800-747-7301.