Do you know what the difference is between an acoustic guitar and a trampoline? One of my favorite music jokes. The truth is that acoustics can be a pain. Getting a good acoustic sound in the studio usually involves several condenser microphones, some compression, a room mic, and a lot of attention to detail. In a live setting, most acoustics get plugged into a direct box and are given very little thought. The result is usually a dull, unatural ’nylon’ sound. To combat this we have to follow one of my #1 rules in doing sound.

There are 3 types of cables we are going to talk about, and when to use them. Unfortunately, you can’t always tell what type of cable you have just by the connector on the end (XLR, 1/4 inch, etc.), but most connectors have a sleeve that unscrews quickly giving you access to see how the wires are connected to the end so you can figure it out. We will cover 3 generic types of cables: microphone, instrument, and speaker cables. Using the correct cable for appropriate applications will help eliminate 99% of possible buzz and hum, and in some cases make the system safer to operate.

In my last post, I mentioned some of my favorite mics. There are a couple questions I get frequently about mics, and I’m going to answer those in this post. There are 3 tricky things to mic well, and those are: pianos, choirs, and pastors.

I see a lot of churches try to cut corners when it comes to purchasing microphones. If you were building on to your church building, how would you like having to use an inferior tool kit, like the one I got for my 8th birthday? A screwdriver that bends, a hammer with plastic handle and tape measure that only pulls out 6′ would all make the job extremely difficult. In churches I see the equivalent of microphones all too often. Let me give you a list of my favorite mics, and why.

Last night I attended an awards banquet with my wife. She teaches at a charter school with multiple locations, and all of the Ohio schools came together to honor the honor-roll kids. In a 1,000 seat ballroom at a downtown hotel, I heard some very unprofessional audio mistakes, and it reminded me, sometimes it can be about what you don’t hear.