In the ongoing effort to balance intensity with volume levels I made a change to our system processing this week.
Last weekend we got the usual complaints but this time I was told that people said “it sounds great, it’s just too loud.” I’ve never heard “sounds great” as part of a volume complaint so I perked up. It might be because people who complain generally like choirs and we had one last week. Just a guess.
It was interesting to me because I featured the choir and lead vocal prominently and let the band take a little of the back seat. Ironic after all my talk about vocal placement but it just felt right for the morning. To give an idea, measured in dB-A Slow the band even with guitar solo ranged from 85 to 89 at most. At the 9am service I let the choir run up to peaks of 93 with no complaints. At the 11am service I only ran the choir up to 91 and 92 with complaints. In each case I just gave the room what felt right at any moment.
On Monday I gave a critical listen to the raw CD over the system. Truthfully, it’s a little in-your-face in the high-mids especially when it breaks 89dB-A. I can see how it would be uncomfortable for some.
After the jump: Smaart screen shots and audio clips of adjustments made to the system if you’re interested. If you don’t feel like wandering off into the technical weeds, just jump down to the audio clips.
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