Have you ever heard a comment from a worshipper, whether positive or negative, regarding the live sound experience that totally differs from what you thought you just heard and mixed?

Large room acoustics (particularly room modes), loudspeaker selection/orientation/optimization, audience size and participation, and several other factors all contribute to the fact that the live sound experience is different in every seat in your worship space.

If it’s a great room with proper system design and installation, those variations may be minor. In many instances, they are not minor.

Either way, they do exist, and the front of house mixer must realize that he or she is only listening to (and mixing to) one position’s perspective when standing behind the mixing console.

During worship, only one of all those factors is under his control: the mix. The best the mixer can do is understand the other factors and learn to mix within that particular environment.

There are some worship facilities where consistency has been achieved across most of the audience area through excellent design and integration. But for the vast majority of venues, it’s one thing to create a brilliant mix for the mix position and another thing to translate that across the whole house.

So it is critical to walk the audience area whenever possible to hear the perspectives of the audience areas (especially if there is a trustworthy A2 to drive the console for a few minutes at a time).

Tonality may be noticeably different in some locations. For instance, it may be discovered that the majority of the house hears a little more bass thump than the mix position does. The mixer that notices this can take it into account in the mixing process. That would never be noticed, and compensated for, without walking away from the mix position.

In addition to tonal variations, it is not uncommon that loudness changes with position as well. If the loudest locations are in the front rows, that may be OK. Wouldn’t even the least technical worshipper expect a bit of a louder experience when choosing a front row seat?

Consider that the overall worship level should be mixed for the loudest location in the house. If that’s not the mix position, then periodic walks are necessary to ensure excessive loudness does not occur at any seat (or the complaints that follow).

If the mixer can only walk the house during sound check or review, OK. If he can walk the house discreetly during the live service, even better. Not only does the presence of the audience acoustically affect the result, but an audience participating in corporate worship (singing) markedly affects the overall sonic experience.

For this author, nothing replaces the value of briefly walk-checking the house during the live worship mixing experience. The varying parameters discussed above, within which we must operate, are mostly results of room design and system design or optimization missing their marks. But rather than blame those factors, learn them, and mix around them. If they are to be addressed and improved, that is for another time (and is off topic here).

So, next time you receive a comment regarding the sound experience in worship, whether positive or negative, make sure you ask where the person was sitting. That can help greatly in understanding and interpreting various perspectives.

Kent Margraves began with a B.S. in Music Business and soon migrated to the other end of the spectrum with a serious passion for audio engineering. Over the past 25 years he has spent time as a staff audio director at two mega churches, worked as worship applications specialist at Sennheiser and Digidesign, and toured the world as a concert front of house engineer. Margraves currently serves the worship technology market at WAVE (wave.us) and continues to mix heavily in several notable worship environments including his home church, Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC. His mission is simply to lead ministries in achieving their best and most un-distracted worship experience through technical excellence. His specialties are mixing techniques, teaching, and RF system optimization.