First Baptist Church in Tacoma -Sound Booth Complete

As you can see the site lines to the platform are none existent. The new design will fix that. In total they only had 29 rack spaces for the entire sound booth.

Here the sound man is making some adjustments. He has to stand on his toes to see down to the platform. The sound entering the booth was blocked by the huge video rack to the left and there was a balcony railing with a glass insert on the right side of the booth.

This is what my iPhone took when I held it over the video rack. The worship team is on the floor in front of the platform.

Here we started to build up the floor. We raised it one step (approx. 7"). We also got our electrician in to make sure we had 4 20 amp dedicated circuits.

these are the feed wires from the platform and the floor pockets under the first row of pews.

The raw frame of the booth starts to take shape. Under the tabletop there is a 6" trough thats runs the full width of the booth. We painted the trough and the wall black to hide all the cables

Here it is all populated with equipment. The new booth has 55 rack spaces and now they have clear site lines to the platform.

Here is the computer/video side of the booth. The cables just above the remotes are to plug in a laptop to the video system. They use a Apple laptop for special videos.

The video section. The middle rack has four 7" monitors and the DVD recorder. One for each camera and one for each Roland V4 switcher output. We doubled the video feed of all the devices to feed each V4. One V4 sends signal to main screen and the other to the back screen which is on the balcony face.

Here is the audio setup. On the left is the CD/Cassette playback, in the middle is a power-strip, verb, and an audio distribution amp. The right side has the patch-bays. The 1/4" patchbay is used to bring all the playback devices into the system and the TT (tiny telephone) patchbay connects the platform feed to the channels in the board

all pictures were taken with a first generation iPhone. We prebuilt the parts for the booth and installed it from a Thursday morning through to Saturday at about 8:00 pm.

Home Recording Studio Sound Proofing

For years now I’ve been on the search for the most practical, beneficial sound proofing material for Home Recording Studio. I now feel it is possible to build a quality home recording studio inside a home or garage. With basic construction skills you too can build a professional level recording studio in your home. Here is a case study using Quiet Solutions product to pull it off.

First Baptist Church in Tacoma - Sound Booth Overhaul

The First Baptist Church in Tacoma gets a Sound/Video Booth overhaul. They have a very tight space and a lot of gear. We took their equipment list and put together a very efficient design. The install takes place from Jan 21 - 23. We are also raising the floor one step (7”) to get better visibility for the sound/video personnel.



Phase One of the overhaul was to move the monitors amps down to the platform. We did that in Nov ’09. The amps for the mains are still in the booth (as you can see on the audio rack on the right side of the booth).

Phase Two - the design, construction, fabrication and install of new booth.

Once the install is done I will post an update.

First Baptist Church in Tacoma - System Rewire

Chris Pak from First Baptist church in Tacoma contacted me about their system a few weeks ago. They felt that the system was not operating properly and there were some wiring issues regarding hum in the system. I don’t know who designed the system but I did meet the installer. The amplifiers were placed in the sound booth under the mixer, feeding the monitors and the main speakers from the balcony. The system design consisted of a center cluster with additional speakers for side fills all located behind the suspended ceiling.
The cluster: 6 boxes of McCauley M120 speakers, and 2 subs cabinets (mounted one on each side of the array) not sure what the side fills are.
The processing for the system: DBX Driverack PA The driverack was set to a JBL 3 way speaker system with subs. (The McCauley system is a 2-way box)
The sound was very thin and I could tell that the mids where none existent.

We programed a custom setting in the driverack and the speakers came alive with all kinds of good sound.

TV Show Audio for Video

We just finished doing a pilot (4 shows) for V-Boys Productions. The show is a talk show format similar to "The Vue" but with a Christian perspective. The Show is called "The Vanessa Waller Show". We provided the audio recording for the shoot. Here is a picture of the set.





There are 5 hosts for the show and a small live audience. We mic'd the hosts direct with wireless lapel mics, and recorded everything to Logic Studio. An important thing to remember, is the format. You need to record the audio in 16 bit 48 kHz because that is the format for the video when you bring it together in post. The show was shoot in HD (720p 30p) using Panasonic HVX200 cameras.


The next shoot takes place next month. We are going to record directly into one of the cameras and to Logic from now on. It is much easier to edit in post if you have good audio synced to a camera when you bring all the footage into post and the logic recording will be the backup.

How to Build a Home Recording Studio Recording Studio

First off this picture is not a picture of a home recording studio. It is however a good example of what to target towards.



I recently was invited to visit a ministry that is in the process of building a recording studio in Seattle. They are taking 2 rooms of an existing building, and converting then to a recording studio. The proposed design is to build a box within a box retaining the original shape of the room just building a new wall inside of the rooms with an air gap. Not sure who did the design but it will definitely create problems. This setup is a recipe for Standing Waves

How Important is it to Aim Speakers?

I just finished correcting a problem at the St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Issaquah. The problem was a very reverberant space with lots of echo. In the sanctuary there wasn’t a lot sound absorbing materials, tile floors, plaster walls in a basic rectangular shaped room. The 4 speakers providing sound to the 4 seating areas were located in the skylight structure. see pics

ISP in Idaho

We just finished doing an install of a pair of ISP HDM 115 speakers in the All Saints Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho. We had to create special brackets for the beams in the sanctuary. As you can see from the pictures, the beams have different angles from one side to the other. Here is a picture with the old speakers (Mackie SRM 450) and what it looks like now.

United Church Complete

Well here we are all finished with the install. We moved some of the equipment we replaced (with the new equipment) downstairs to a multifunction room. Put it all in a rack (see above pics) We also brought a feed down from the sanctuary so they could use this room as an overflow.


We installed a custom plate that they can plug the mics directly into and the speaker cables with a choice of spring clip or speakon connectors. Here is the back end of the rack with all the cables neatly in place.

United Church ISP Install

We just finished the install at the United Church in University Place, WA. We changed the location of the speakers along with new ISP Speakers. The front pews really don’t need re-enforcement because they are close enough to hear everything naturally. That allowed us to install 2 overhead choir mics for the choir. The comments from he congregation were “I could hear everything clearly for the first time in years” “I sit in the back and I could hear the choir” (they were not able to mic the choir before because of the old speaker location) The choir is located between the 2 arches on the right side. Between the old speaker location and the new speaker location



Here is a picture of the old board and the new board. We changed out the old board for a Behringer Xenyx 2442 FX, and the recording device to a Tascam CC-222SL CD/Cass recorder. We installed a stagebox with 6 XLR and 2 monitor jacks to the right of the platform.


The church will replace the FOH cabinet so they can enclose the board to lock it up. All in all this was a very clean install. We also added a monitor and a Sennheiser mic for Jeff the worship leader