How to Set Up Sound Equipment for Church Worship

Setting up sound equipment for worship is a very important task that’s crucial to any church worship gathering. And while there are many similarities in church worship sound and sound reinforcement for any event or venue, there are some parts that are unique to the worship setting.

As church audio engineers (whether we’re experts, or just getting involved in this role for the first time), our job is to help the worship team engage the congregation during the musical portion of the service by creating an immersive mix of the instruments, and to make sure everyone can hear the pastor and any other speakers clearly during their message.

Choose the right sound equipment for church worship.

The first step to setting up and using sound equipment for your church is choosing the best equipment for your church, specifically. Unfortunately, many of us aren’t blessed with the luxury to handpick every part of our sound systems, having been passed down whatever sound equipment has been at the church for years. But if you have the chance to make choices on what equipment you have as a part of your sound system (or even what pieces to upgrade or change out), do your research to find what will work best for you. If you’re in over your head, bring in local experts or a sound installation company. The great news is that even if you don’t know any local experts, larger sound and music supply companies like Sweetwater offer personal sales engineers who have the knowledge to help you put together a complete sound system for your church.

Here are the basic components you’d need for a typical church sound system:

• Microphones, direct boxes, connections, and cables to get voices and instruments into your system
• A soundboard/mixer to process all these microphones and instruments and send them out to speakers (check out our article on the 5 Best Soundboards for Church Worship!)
• Main speakers to reproduce the medium to high-frequency content or the full range of your sound
• Subwoofers to reproduce the deep low-end content of your sound
• Monitor System (most likely in ear monitors– check out our other article on 5 Best In Ear Monitors) for your worship team to hear themselves on stage
• Cables like a stage snake or digital cable run from the stage to the booth in the back (front of house)
• Power cables and connections for all speakers, stage sources, and the tech booth
• Accessories like microphone stands, etc.

Take time to configure your system correctly.

Today, it’s a lot less complicated to put together sound equipment for worship that is professional yet easy to configure. For instance, digital mixers and powered speakers (which are plug and play and do not require a separate power amplifier) mean you can simply plug one cable from your soundboard/mixer to the speaker and it will make sound! Whereas in the past, you’d have to send the signal from the soundboard to a processing rack, to the amp rack to generate power, then out to the speakers.

Digital soundboards will have the processing that’s needed for your individual microphones and instruments, main speakers, monitors, and subwoofers built in. So you can connect the main outputs to your main speakers, and use auxiliaries for monitors, and use either an aux or mono output for your subwoofer. With most powered subwoofers today, you can even use the built-in crossover and volume controls to simply chain it together with the mains and get a decent sound if you have to, although the best configuration would allow you to independently control the subs, so you could only send items like the bass guitar and kick drum to them.

Some things you’ll want to do to make sure your system is at least at a basic “ready to go” level are:

• If you have subwoofers in your system, use an equalizer or crossover to cut or attenuate frequencies in your main speakers that are below a certain range, such as 100hz.
• Use an equalizer or crossover to cut frequencies in your subwoofers that are above a certain range, like 150hz.
• Set the volume levels on your actual speakers and subwoofers higher for more “headroom,” and use the soundboard to control how much signal is sent to them (you don’t want to “clip” the input of the speakers, resulting in a distortion sound and not being able to get your mix loud enough).

Some of the more advanced techniques of processing your speakers will require a little bit of expertise, but it’s nothing you can’t learn online! If you take the time to research and seek out the information, there are tons of resources available to help you understand the workings of the sound equipment you can use at church.

Don’t be afraid to dig in or think that you can’t do anything without hiring an expert. Many times, people think you need someone with devices that can make “pink noise” to shoot through the room and fine-tune the equalizers, to do any adjustments. And it’s true– when you have a professional sound installation done, that will be a part of optimizing your equipment to get the most out of the sound quality for your specific space. But what we want to focus on here is more simple than that, and just about anyone can master the basic concepts needed to tweak the sound equipment to be sure it is functioning properly.

The biggest skill to develop is listening. If you notice that no matter what you do, all of the mixes sound muddy or too thick and don’t have clarity, you might need to adjust the EQ on your main speakers to remove some of the frequencies around 250hz. Or you may boost the frequencies around 8khz. If you find that there’s not enough deep low end, you could boost the subwoofers at around 60hz. Or if there’s a point where your mics are heading towards “feedback” (the high pitch screeching sound) in the high midrange, you could attenuate some of the frequency around 4khz. If these numbers don’t make sense to you, there are resources online to help you master the frequency range and develop your ear to hear what sounds these numbers represent.

Some helpful typical frequencies to know:

• 60hz to 80hz: the deep pulse of a kick drum
• 125kz: punch of a kick drum
• 4khz to 8khz: the “click” or snap of a kick drum
• 80hz to 125hz: the primary frequency range of a 4-string bass guitar in the mix (but don’t forget the high mids!)
• 100hz and below: loud puffs and pops on vocals (hint: cut these out with EQ or high pass)
• 250hz: thickness in vocals (many times you can remove some of this to help with clarity)
• 8khz to 12khz: vocal clarity to boost
• 200hz: nice thud thickness for a snare drum
• 400hz to 500hz: ambient noise and roomy overtones that should probably be removed from toms or snare drums
• 1khz to 4khz: the snap or pop of a snare drum
• 12khz to 16khz: the sparkle in drum overheads

Focus on the details when mixing and processing your sound signals.

Make sure you are familiar with and employ basic audio techniques to get a professional sound in your mix for church. You don’t have to be an expert to apply a few basic things that will set your church’s sound apart and take it from mediocre to excellent. This is another area where you can absorb lots of knowledge from resources and training programs online, such as one great training program called Production Online.

There are a few basics you want to cover on each and every input channel of the soundboard. The first would be setting a proper “input gain” level. The gain is the first stage of adding volume to any source. So you want to have the singers or musicians soundcheck as loudly as they will ever expect to play or sing, and turn the gain level up to where you are getting a strong signal but it’s still at least a few decibels away from “clipping” or going in the red. This will give you plenty of room to get enough volume with the channel’s main volume fader.

Next is equalization, or EQ. One of the biggest problems you can hear when someone inexperienced is mixing sound is a lack of clarity on vocal and speaking microphones. But that problem is easily solved by just giving proper attention to EQ on them. This will depend on the microphone, but a very common technique to try is, first, make sure you’re cutting the low frequencies below 100hz to prevent any “plosives” (pops from the wind of “P” sounds from a human voice) and rumbling from handling noise. Then attenuate (reduce) some of the muddy frequency range around 200hz to 250hz. Finally, you can then gently (or more aggressively if needed) boost frequencies from 4khz to 12khz to bring out clarity and breathiness.

After EQ is usually compression. While compression can take some understanding and experience to master, the biggest thing to understand is compression helps to manage the volume of a source as it ebbs and flows. If a vocalist sings really softly on a verse but then jumps an octave and sings loudly on the chorus, compression would help keep the level consistent without the sound engineer having to constantly ride the volume fader (although that is still something you should never shy away from completely).

The “ratio” setting on compression is how much regular signal there is vs. the compressed or “squished” signal. A 2:1 ratio will be gentle and subtle, while a 4:1 or 8:1 ratio will be very aggressive and you’ll more audibly hear the alteration of the compressor on the voice or instrument. Then the “threshold” setting determines when the compression kicks in. Usually, you can use the meters to see that the compressor is reducing the volume of the source by about 2-3dB on medium loud parts, or 4-5 dB on very loud parts, and that will be a healthy range. “Attack” and “release” time will vary a lot based on the source, but the idea is just how quickly the compressor kicks in and when it “let’s go” of the signal, so you may have to experiment a bit when you want to move past the default settings.

Finally, after gain levels, EQ, and compression, the icing on the cake for a professional-sounding mix is the use of FX (effects). The main effect you’ll want to add to just about any musical mix is reverb. Reverb helps the vocals (and some instruments, like especially the snare drum) sit in the mix well and not sound so dry and artificial when being reproduced by the sound system. Most of the time you’ll need to tweak the default settings to taste before a reverb is very useful in a worship setting. For instance, you want to be sure it sounds like a nice subtle wash of sound and not like you’re in a shower! For a good start, try settings with a pre-delay time of around 30ms and a decay time of 4 seconds.

Find the right balance in volume level for worship.

One last thing to think about that’s discussed A LOT with church worship sound is the overall volume level. While there’s a lot of ways to get “in the weeds” on the subject, the most important part is remembering to serve the vision of your church. The sound equipment is just a facilitator of that vision, so you’ll need the leadership’s support and understanding in how sound can create the environment for worship.

In general, the musical mix should be loud and powerful enough so that the room doesn’t feel awkward, which would discourage people from participating and singing along. But it should be controlled enough that it’s not just a “wall of sound” that hurts people’s ears when listening.

(Hint: most of the time when folks are saying it’s too loud, it’s an issue with a poor mix in general or an offensive frequency range. So, if you can practice dialing in the EQ’s well and have your system configured correctly, you will encounter less complaints in that area).

This balance is probably the main difference in church worship sound and reproducing sound for an entertainment venue, etc. The attendees in the room are not just getting a performance from the worship team but are participating in offering up worship to God along with those on stage with microphones and instruments. One sign of that balance being right is if you can hear the congregation around you singing along, but you can also hear the music in a way that’s immersive and filling the room so that people will be comfortable singing loudly without feeling overly exposed.

The world of sound equipment for church and worship specifically is very vast, but it’s also very accessible and easier than ever to bring excellent sound to every worship gathering. We hope we have supplied some helpful tips if you’re just getting started or put words to experiences you’ve already had if you’ve done sound for a church for a long time!