Tuesday 28 December 2010

Music Impact

I spent some time in the church this afternoon practising with the sound equipment. The service on 2nd should show that our solution to the original problem may be better in result than if we'd not had a problem in the first place. The controls are such that I can be a full on DJ, but the point about preparation is to know the levels about which I will have to pay more attention to averages and not just peaks.

I spent time sitting in different places including up against the walls. It doesn't really matter where you sit, even if the centre is most balanced, and when you turn your head the stereo effect gets redelivered from the back, as well as the effect from treble and bass separation and their qualities. One effect of moving in a straight line back to front or vice versa is that the sound stays with you and retains its width.

The music originating from the 21 Hymns choir CD is pretty grotty, even after all my noise reduction and stereofying and filtering: the system exposes poor origin sound. But when the sound is good, and this includes other choir CD material, it is very good. The simpler the music source - piano, organ, voice - the better the impact, so long as it is binaural or stereo in recording.

The system is also its own corrective to wordy services. We should be more visually experimental but the sound side is at full potential. The Puritans would not have approved.

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