Pro Sound Web: Last year, a worship leader named Jordan Richmond wrote a post on Thom Rainer’s blog. The post is entitled, “How Loud Should Our Church Music Be?” and it incited no small number of comments. In fact, if you have some time, go read the comments; some are quite amusing.
5 comments:
As the author of the article pointed out, there are a lot of things wrong with the guys idea of a perfect volume. The number one issue is probably that there is no perfect volume. As the author pointed out, it changes drastically from venue to venue and from audience to audience.
The idea that there is a perfect volume would be very nice to believe. And if there were a method to find out how to achieve this, theaters everywhere would rejoice. But until then, sound designers can continue to test levels to see what works.
his was a fascinating insight to the ideal sound. I had no idea the iPhone SPL app was so off. That is a major frustration, especially for venues that have a lot of people thinking the app is correct, as the article pointed out.
If we could find a "perfect volume", that could solve a lot of issues, but it would make the experience from venue to venue more bland. With a perfect volume, there would be no variation, no loud church or quiet church because everyone would complain saying we found the perfect volume so why isn't the church (or venue or whatever) using it.
Volume is such a fickle beast that even assuming that there is an elusive "perfect volume" is ridiculous. Even if there is a venue-specific one, it's going to differ from person to person. Especially in a place of worship like a church, people have very set expectations on how loud music should be. The fact that patrons are approaching the booth with a silly iPhone app telling the mixer that it's too loud in the venue is so disrespectful. You're telling the mixer how to do his job and I have a big problem with that. Using an app to back you up is equally as ridiculous. Telling the mixer you think it's too loud is one thing. Backing yourself up with your latest App Store purchase is another.
I think that the most important thing to remember about the idea of the "perfect volume" is that it is largely subjective to your artist and your audience. In Disney World your audience is families and vacationers looking to be entertained by the works of Disney. For this audience you would want the volume to be loud enough for all to hear it but low enough that it is still comfortable. Whereas if you go to a Metallica concert your going to want a much louder volume. This is because the audience is going to want to get into the music in this way. They want to feel every kick of the Kick drum and be immersed in the loud guitar solos permeating through the venue.
New favorite fake factoid: "75db is the best volume ever!." Joking aside, I would agree that the matter of volume is a much more nuanced conversation than just taking out a meter and measuring the current noise. Audience, content, and mix all matter just as much as absolute volume. One thing that I miss in a lot of mixes is an audible change in volume. I feel that lots of recorded music is constantly tuned to play at one volume, which obviously is fine, but I can't help but wonder how much cooler it would sound if volume was a variable they could play with. But going back to churches, yeah, a bunch of old people probably don't want to hear super loud stuff..
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