Designing a Sound System for a Portable Church

There are a million different factors that come in to play when designing a sound system of any size. The number of factors seems to double if sound system in discussion is a portable one. So where does one even being to nail down details?

I first asked myself the question; what does it mean to be portable? In my mind, being portable means two things. First, making sure equipment is protected for the rough road life. Second, quick setup is important to get your system up and running as fast and as smooth as possible. Lets take a look at each of these areas in more depth.

Protection. To protect the system, EVERYTHING needs to be properly placed in a case. Equipment cases are costly but not having cases for equipment is NOT an option.

Quick Setup. The entire system needs to be able to set up and tore down extremely quickly. It is going to be difficult to find volunteers willing to show up at 3am to begin setting up the sound system for a Sunday service. It is going to be just as difficult to find people who want to spend their whole Sunday afternoon packing equipment up. To be able to set up and tear down a system quickly really comes down to one thing: how many wires need to be run and plugged in? This is where compromises are going to be made. One extra wire doesn’t really take that much time to run, right? The equation below represents this phenomenon.

Volunteer Exhaustion & Frustration [is directly proportional to] Number of Wires to Connect each Sunday

So what monetary value can be assigned to the time of your volunteers? Since I do not think that any churches goal is to create exhausted and frustrated volunteers, a very high value should be placed on reducing the amount of connections that need to be made. To that end, there are a number of things that can greatly reduce setup and tear down time. One of these things is by converting equipment which would normally be hardwired to wireless. Adding four more wireless microphones eliminates four cables that need to be run on a Sunday morning. Adding wireless in ear monitors for each performer can reduce many more connections. Another way to reduce cabling is to use digital equipment. Using a digital snake and a digital mixing board can reduce connections by leaps and bounds. Instead of connecting 32 individual snake channels to a mixing board, one or two network connections can be plugged in. Digital mixing boards also have the advantage of having processing gear built in. This eliminates the need for connecting compressors, equalizers and effects processors.

In the end I think the real question comes down to not “How inexpensively can we put a system together?” but “What is it going to cost to design a portable system, and design it right?”

The issue then becomes defining what is “right.” To do this, an external system contractor/ designer should be brought onto the scene. A system contractor can work with a church to design a portable system and set long term goals for future technology expansion.

Retrofitting a portable church with the propper sound system can seem a daunting task. Being ready to dedicate the propper resources and bringing a system contractor into the design can help mitigate much of the confusion and fustration which often surrounds church sound systems.