To start, I’m writing this blog for Steve W., who posted a question on the Facebook page for A Sound Church. If you have questions, ideas, suggestions or just want to stay in touch, I invite you to that page, and also my Twitter. Being relevant to what you want to know is my #1 goal, so bring on the interactiveness.

A channel EQ will typically be either a 3-band (Highs, Mids, and Lows) or a 4-band (Highs, Hi-Mids, Lo-Mids, and Lows) EQ. The confusion starts when your board has 4 bands, yet there are 6, 8, 12+ knobs. Look at the photo in this post. This is a 4-band EQ. There are 2 knobs each for the highs and lows (red and black knobs respectively). There are also 3 knobs each for the high- and low- mids (green and blue knobs respectively).

My guess is, if you’re reading this, that you are the type that always readjusts the treble and bass in your car, trying to find that ideal setting. If you understand treble and bass and how it affects the sound, you can start to build on that and adjust the mids, or high and low mids as well.

Let me ask you a question. What do you think of the sound of your room? What I want to know is how you think it sounds when you turn off the sound system. Have you heard an acoustic piano or drum kit played in the room while you sit in the seats and just listen? How about the voices of a choir, sans amplification? I’m guessing very few of you would say it sounds very good. Walk into any church and there’s a better than 50% chance you’ll find some kind of acoustic treatment on the walls, in the ceiling, under the stage, etc. If you’ve added these at your church, let us know if you noticed a big difference or not. I tend to find these treatments as band-aids, not resolutions.

One of the most common comments I get sounds something similar to, “We got this great sound system, and at first it was an awesome improvement from our old system. Now, though, it just sounds bad. I’m not sure what else we need to do!”

On one hand, I feel for these churches. They are right. They did invest in a good-sounding system. They believe the problem though, is with their gear. I think the problem, which is not the best word to use, though, lies someone else.

Recently, I’ve been able to work a couple shows, and it has reminded me how much different the church world is from the ‘real’ world when it comes to audio and production. I’ve had a few thoughts stick in my mind that I want to share, and some insight I’d like to impart after a conversation or two with some production company owners, roadies, and musicians. The 1st lesson I want to share is one that I hadn’t planned on mentioning or focusing on when I started this blog. However, this aspect is one of the most important areas you can focus on to become the best possible audio engineer.

There are a few colorful noises in audio. Pink noise. White noise. What does it all mean? When I have a question, I consult wikipedia.org. Their description of pink noise is:

1/ƒ noise is used… to refer to any noise with a power spectral density of the form

where ƒ is frequency and 0 < α < 2, with α usually close to 1. These “1/ƒ-like” noises occur widely in nature and are a source of considerable interest in many fields.

There. Does that clear it all up?