Mid Summer Eastern Canada Tour is shaping up. This includes Eastern Ontario, Quebec and all of the Maritime Provinces. Thank you Sherbrooke, Trois Rivieres and Shiwinigian.
(Updated May 1, 2012)

The ocean of air between the pulpit and the listener has many invisible perils.  The biggest danger is when sound is on it's journey, destructive reflections amplified by the sound system often changes the sounds of the words.  This always changes the meaning of the message.  Joseph De Buglio April 16 2012

When standing at the pulpit at your church and the sound system is off, do you speaker louder or quieter? 
When you turn the sound system on, do you speak just as loud or quieter? 
If you answer quieter to either of these two questions, you most likely have a major acoustical problem.
October 22, 2011

"All churches are unique.  Even when two churches are built alike, they will both be different and they will sound different because no two congregations are alike and they will always want to personalize a new building design.  All churches have the same special requirements.  All churches have the same basic requirements and some have advanced requirements.  These requirements are not optional as they are the foundation of what is needed to hear and participate in a large space.  Management of sound in the church is to always achieve the same goals regardless of the room shape, size and materials built from. All churches want the same results whether the sound is amplified or not. All churches are unique. All churches want to be unique yet they all want the same results - to hear speech and music clearly."
Is this possible!!! 
It is possible and it has been done.

(c) Joseph De Buglio 2011

So you dial in a great mix when the praise team or choir rehearsed before worship service. Everything sounds great. Everything sounds grand for the first song. Then about half way through the 2nd or 3rd song, the music starts to sound horrible. The balance of the vocals and instruments are way off. It seems like the vocals and any instruments using open mics are being turn down or the electronic instruments were turned up. Seconds later, you hear the onset of feedback or ringing in the sound system. But how! Everything was sounding so good just a few seconds ago. HELP!!!!

Is this sort of scenario happening almost every week? Are you finding that after a few songs the performance of the sound system has changes? Are you struggling with getting decent gain before feedback, even with the pastor's headset mic? Is this a sound system problem and do we have to upgrade again? If the sound at your church changes during worship or from week to week, it's not you (the sound operator); it's not your sound system; it's not the performers, the choir or the people speaking through the sound system. 99% of the time the problem is a result of the room.

The sequence of reflections, the storage of energy in a confined space and the large flat surfaces in a worship space are all susceptible to climate changes. When people sing, they change the humidity and temperature of the worship space. Sound travels faster through water than through the air. When you rehearsed before worship the room had a lower level of humidity. As people started coming into the worship space, already the temperature started going up and churches with air conditioning, most systems are not able to keep the room stable during worship. When the people start to sing, the humidity of the room changes and the threshold of feedback shift from being stable to unstable. When this happens all you can do is lower the level of the sound system. Micro-managing each and every microphone changes the mix balance and things go downhill from there. Just turn the master fader down and leave the mix alone. It will keep the glaring eyes down to a dull roar.

The fix is - as you can guess - is fix the acoustics. A room with the acoustics as was in Solomon's temple will give your worship experience a stable sound system and an improvement in the congregational singing too.

In my books, a church without acoustical treatment or has built in features is a church that has not been completed. Another way of saying it, a church is not finished its construction until the acoustics are done. What kind of acoustics? Any system that can give you at least 12 of the 14 item listed below.

Question: When is there too much bass in a church?
Answer: When everyone else can hear it and the performers can't.

There are two main approaches to acoustics in churches.
One approach is call "sound system acoustics." That is when the acoustical fix is designed to get more performance from a sound system. This often means going overboard with a single action treatment which often "kills the room" or they provide just enough treatment to get enough additional performance to justify a sound system upgrade. While the sound system does perform better, it is most likely not working as well as it could and often the worship experience is reduced somewhat. In many instances the worship experience, especially the congregational singing is reduced a lot.
The second approach is called "Complete church acoustics." That is when the acoustical fix brings the room up to peak performance for almost all aspects of worship. In one step the fix is designed to make the room perform well for;

1. congregational singing
2. the praise and worship team
3. cutting the stage noise down
4. improving the sound of the choir and for the choir to hear themselves
5. assisting the ministers to hear themselves better
6. hearing speech without a sound system to a larger area of the room without the sound system
   (up to 80 ft in most rooms)
7. people with hearing aids to hear further without assistance.
   If you can hearing well at 10 ft normal conversation in a quiet room,
   the church acoustics should be just as good. (depending on the type of hearing loss you may have.)
8. any acoustical performances such as the piano, the pipe organ or digital organ, guitars and orchestra instruments.
9. improving the bass response for all musical instruments and amplified bass
10. sub woofers will see a 3 to 6dB boost
11. drum kits (reducing or eliminating the need for drum shields.)
12. tremendous gain before feedback
13. Less distortion from the sound system
14. Able to mix from any seat in the church

A room that can do all of this would be an excellent worship space that can double as a multi-purpose worship space able to perform well for all styles of preaching, worship and music. The big question is, which acoustical fix will cost less?
The two approaches to church acoustics often cost the same. If your sound system company is recommending an acoustical fix for your church to improve the sound system performance and they are not offering to fix any or most these problems at the same time, then you could be compromising your church further and doing more harm to the spiritual growth of your church. Gaining a better sound system at the expense of congregational singing can undo everything your minister and elders are trying to do. All of your acoustical and sound system problems should be fixed in one step and we have the most experience in keeping that promise.


A Classic Church and Cathedral - Kingston Rd United Church, Completed 2009. You can have conversations with people at 130 ft in this room and the RT60 is over 1.6 seconds.


In 1987, this project included real projection, high powered subwoofers, over 25 performers on stage and 56 channel soundcraft mixer.

A congregation isn't passive like the audience in a theatre or concert hall. Worshipers play a vital, active role. Churches should be an environment that connects the people to each other and supports their participation in the worship and the message.

Good church acoustics should be part of your outreach and growth plans by making the worship experience exciting and spiritual.

The days of the “Wait and See results” when a new church is built or debating fixing an existing church are over. Doing the proper Math, Science, and Physics that is specifically geared to church is what gets results.

Church Sound Systems and Church Acoustics is a recipe of Science, Physics, Mathematics, a detailed knowledge of Resources, Materials and Technology and knowledge of how the different denominations and worship styles use speech and music to communicate.