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 problem I encounter in churches, is the sound engineer never moving out from behind the board. It should not be a surprise that most churches (and a lot of clubs I’ve run sound in too, unfortunately) have horrible ’sound booth’ placement. So, if you’re under a balcony, in the back corner of the room, and inside a closet, and the sound is PERFECT from where you sit, you must have done a great job compensating for the bad acoustical enviornment where you are, but what about the rest of the room? Is the congregation being subjected to bad audio and holding your responsible?