Music too loud? Maybe...
Jan 20, 2005 3:17 PM
When a member of a church congregation complains to the music minister that the music is “too loud,” what does that mean?
It might simply mean the music is too loud. But it might also mean the words are unintelligible, the individual doesn’t like the style, or he or she is sitting in the one bad seat in the whole house. Media ministers, and their designers, need to be carefully attuned to these complaints and what they really indicate.
Gordon Moore, vice president of sales at Lectrosonics, based in Rio Rancho, N.M., cautions that complaints about excessively loud music are often symptoms of other problems. He cites one church that replaced a thrown-together assortment of stereo speakers with a properly designed speaker cluster, and improved intelligibility so much that volume complaints dropped off dramatically.
Another hidden problem, Moore says, can be overuse of compressors. Compressing the signal being sent to a speaker amplifier can help even out levels on instruments and improve audibility of softer sounds. But Moore says many people overdo the compression, and as a result strip the music of much of its dynamic range.
“It’s not so much that people mind loud parts in the music,” Moore says, “but they don’t want it loud all the time.”
For acoustical designer Lisa Thorburn, president of Thorburn Associates, Castro Valley, CA, some sound perception problems arise from a real fork-in-the-road decision made early in the design stage. That decision is whether to favor the spoken word or musical performance in designing the space.
“What works very well for singing and the spoken word does not work for concert-style worship,” Thorburn says. “Acoustically and architecturally it’s going to be tough to adjust the reverb times for different sorts of worship.”
For example, she says, while the pastor’s sermon or a traditional vocal ensemble may benefit from a little extra reverberation, “with a 2.5-second reverb time, a trumpet is going to be much louder than a choir.” While guitars, keyboards, and other electric instruments offer volume adjustments, that’s not the case for many other instruments. Brass players, for instance, are not going to be able to tone down their volume enough to address congregants’ complaints.
While some modest adjustments are generally possible, Thorburn says, the congregation’s experience of music is going to be shaped most by fundamental design considerations - which means these early decisions have to be approached very carefully.
Moore urges media ministers and technical volunteers to rely on meters and objective measurements in setting and adjusting volume for services. Particularly when the same crew is staffing several services in one morning, “ear fatigue” can make them less sensitive to the true volume being beamed at the congregation. Moore terms the resulting problem “volume creep” - the techs turn it up for later services because their ears have gotten accustomed to the volume earlier in the morning.
Finally, Moore says most congregants won’t come right out and say so, but their complaints about excessive loudness could really be comments that the performers aren’t very good. “Once they’re all in tune and playing well, you don’t hear as many complaints,” he says.
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