I recently received a call from a audio fellow friend who is assisting a church in getting their system back up and running after some sort of DSP failure. He works in the PRO AUDIO department at Guitar Center so he sees a lot of this type of work.

Our initial conversation was about blown speakers and how to service them but in the end the DSP proved to be the issue. Just goes to show that without being able to correctly assess an issue, there is no path to a solution.

I volunteered to visit the venue last week just to check things out for myself. The PA currently sounds terrible even though it works again. This indicates that it wasn’t designed correctly in the first place. The room is a big rectangle without almost no acoustic treatment. Clapping my hands in the room yields some of the worst ping pong delay I’ve ever heard. When I put sound through the PA and mute it there is about a 2 second of reverb. This indicates that the PA is loading the walls and possibly the ceiling. Surprisingly the reverb is nice. Most rooms shaped like this church don’t sound nice when loaded.

The PA consists of (8) Frazier 69 speakers. (4) aimed long and (4) aimed short.

Yamaha LS9-16 for the front of house console.

DSP was a dbx Driverack 260 (which failed). It has been replaced by a dbx Driverack PA2.

On my next visit I’ll measure the PA and see if I can help make it sound more flattering.

photos coming soon…