WorshipCentral

Smaller / family congregations tend to go up to about 90ish, rowdier evening sessions get up to 96 at peaks - mostly beacuse we mic the drums for these. Sadly the system in Central Hall wimps out at 98dB... :( (All quoted ratings A weighted at an LEq of 5 seconds. I have a rough idea of what these mean, but you'd have to find a "real" expert to explain them fully - I just do what the nice EHOs tell me to do!)

If you mic the kick drum, God will come.

we tend to run about the same, but levels through any venue will vary hugely depending on where you are, how your speakers are setup etc.
In my experience though perceived loudness is much more to do with the tone of the sound rather than just the volume - if you have distorted guitar going through FOH it will inevitably sound louder than a pipe organ going at the same level - because our hearing perceives distorted sound as being louder. Are you getting complaints??

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At Soul Survivor this year we peaked at 110!

We are running around 90 max but it just seems to sound really quiet.

Loudest I ever got to was pushing 115 at FOH, though there was a ridiculous amount D&B C4 / B2 there. But that wasn't a church event!

In terms of church services, haven't got much of a clue because I don't own a decibel meter. All I know is that apparantly it was rather loud a couple of weeks back when my ears were bunged up and I couldn't hear much at all. Makes sense really...! 90ish sounds about right for the evening services (at a guess), the morning ones are run far quieter though. Partly beacuse the setting is just entirely different and it wouldn't be appreciated, partly because the two little Ramsa cabs either side of the church really don't / can't push much volume out at all.

I'm never sure what to run things at in the morning actually, too quiet and the younger members of the congregation aren't too keen, too loud and the old folk really don't like it... What do others do in this respect?

EDIT: Chris - just wondering, is that because of technical limitations or requests that it doesn't go much louder?

We have a contemporary service and a blended service. Blended usually runs in the high 80's to low 90's. Contemporary runs low to mid 90's. We check decibel levels, but we're starting to think more in terms of whether or not people can hear themselves and others singing during worship. Or course, the criteria is a little different due to the different styles of worship (and it's probably too subjective for some people's tastes).

We have impacted overall sound some by pulling back the guitar amps on stage for the contemporary service. People sitting in the line of fire of the amps were getting drilled so to speak. So we brought them down a lot more and push them through the mains more than we were. This has really helped with the overall sound and has gotten rid of amp hot spots.

We must remember that dB's run logarithmically.

What implications I don't know, and I have no idea how loud our church runs its system.

So to sum up........I have been of no use :P

:D

we stopped using a db meter, because we realized it could sound irritating at 80 db if the mix is bad. i do know that we run in the 90's on a regular basis and it is fairly loud, but it is quite intentional we want people to feel like they can get into worship without worrying about how they sound. we also have a fairly young crowd and feel the freedom to take some liberties in this area to create an environment that is passionate.

seems like 90 db is a fairly constricting limit to me...

I think at Home Focus (HTB's week away) we peaked at 106 in the main venue, but kept it below 100 for the youth stuff. Jords will know more I think!