Audio Systems: Small to Mid Size Church, digital audio processor, automatic mixer

Question
QUESTION: My question is regarding a starting point for sound systems.  We are a small 125 year old church with less than a hundred people and growing by the grace of God!

We have some wireless mics and a small rack mixer that runs these to our seriously under performing speakers. (Of course it could be the mixer and not the speakers) Anyway we are wanting to start recording the sermons and topical studies for distribution to members who aren't present but would like a copy. Also would like to at some point adapt this to live broadcast. (Small glitch) Our Topical studies are done in another room, is there a simple solution to getting some equipment that we can grow into but not blow our annual budget?

Any help would be appreciated.

ANSWER: Hi John-

Please forgive the lateness of my reply; I've just switched email providers, and the email notification from AllExperts got delayed.

I'm going to have to know a little bit more about what you currently have before I can make a recommendation. For example, what is the make/model of your current equipment. Also, what is a budget range for this project? I believe I can help you but I need some details!

You can use the AllExperts interface to ask a follow-up question and provide me with the details.

Thanks!


-Steven L Smith

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: The requested information:
1 Advantage autoONE Automatic Mixer Biamp 8 Channels
3 Nady Systems Wireless
 2 Duets (1Hand/1Lapel)
 1 Encore Duet (Hand)  
1 Ultra-Curve Pro 24bit/96kHz Digital Audio Processor Model DEQ2496
1 Crown CH1 power amp
1 General store purchased CD/Cassette player
1 Table Top Karaoke Machine
2 Column Speaker (which sound pretty good)
Budget for what I am thinking less than a thousand but the church can do just about anything.

Thanks

John

Answer
Hi John-

Sounds like you actually have a fairly decent system. The mixer you have is common in churches, but its capabilities are limited when it comes to doing anything else besides simple sound reinforcement.

Since you have a fairly small budget, I think you'd best be served by getting some new speakers. You said that you have "seriously underperforming speakers" and based on the other equipment you have, it sounds like the speakers are definitely the weak link. To match your Crown amplifier, you would need 8 Ohm speakers capable of 275w of power.

To get sound in the other room, you need, at a minimum, speakers and an amplifer (or you can get powered speakers, which integrate the amplifier into the speakers). If you need to be able to plug multiple things into this system, you will need a mixer as well. The price can range all over the place, depending on how many inputs you need. Some good brands are Mackie, Behringer, and Yamaha. If all you wanted to do is pipe the main church sound into this room, you would only need to run a cable from your current system's outputs into new powered speakers... we did the same thing at our church when we established a "room for energetic children".

The simplest way to set up distribution via CD or tape would be to buy a new mixer... one that has a tape/cd out port. This is usually in the form of red/white RCA plugs that can plug into most commercially-available cd recorders, such as the Marantz CDR300.  To duplicate many copies of this, you could either use a computer or get a standalone CD duplicator such as the Teac CD Tower Duplicator CDW-D1.

Live broadcast is a whole other ballgame, and you will doubtless need separate, dedicated hardware for this. The specifics will vary greatly based on how you're broadcasting... AM? FM? Internet? Since this could easily suck up your entire budget, I'd recommend doing it as a separate project.

Hope this helps!

-Steven