Church Sound: Everything Is Amazing, And No One Is Happy

Acknowledging how awesome all this technology is, and cutting it some slack when it doesn’t work right.
By Mike Sessler • September 20, 2018

Louis CK has a bit in his routine where he describes some of the miracles of modern life, and how we’re never happy with them.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when a few of our musicians got to complaining about the trouble they have communicating with each other during rehearsal now that we’re all on ears.

I thought back to three years ago when I arrived at Coast (my church). We had 7-12 monitors on stage that typically generated 88-90 dB SPL at front of house, 90 feet away with the main PA off.

The sound was pretty dreadful back then, the stage was a mess, the piano was rarely in tune and had more drums in those mic’s than piano, sound check typically took more than an hour and at the end, people were rarely completely happy.