Klipsch Pro

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

Islander — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:38:14 GMT

colterphoto1:
I don't think the KP600's are your answer. Plus I think they'd look pretty oppressive in there.

Especially if you put some AC/DC devil horns on the top, give them some red gel bottom-lighting and cue up Hell's Bells...

Might be a way to clear the place quickly in the event of a fire!

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

colterphoto1 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:51:28 GMT

Not to be taken literally, just a tongue-in-cheek artistic statement.

Read: no thin, wimpy sound- I want sound with balls! How's that?

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

drewby2 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:34:13 GMT

The music can stick to your ribs, The sound system should be transparent. The definition of distortion is some charactoristic of the component that alters the signal as it passed from input to output. It should be about the music and not about the technology. My idea is that even if the music is controlled or shaped it should appear as if it is not.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

colterphoto1 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:28:37 GMT

Or you could mix the vocals to mono and route them through the center cluster only.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

drewby2 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:15:31 GMT

What an interesting idea. Like a home theater have a center channel for the dialog. This would eliminate phaseing and nodes in critical areas and reduce articulation loss. A human voice, unamplified comes from a single point. How can we expect our hearing apparatus to figure out what this "coming from everywhere" sound means? The multipath reverberations would increase the points of origen. This is a recipe for mud.

In my own small church (a few years ago) we put up a central cluster with three 60 dregree dispersion enclosures. After the original design, a sound person seperated all the enclosures of the cluster. This put the sweet spot of each speaker on the ailse. It increased multipath problems and decreased intelligibility. A central cluster is ideal for the intelligibility of speech. The intelligibility of the spoken word should be the first priority of a Christian house of worship. I prefer sound reinforcement to be transparent. I don't like to hear a sound system. I like to hear the voice and music.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

djk — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:16:41 GMT

"May I make this suggestion? If possible mix the vocals to mono and send them through the center cluster only."

I'm glad to see someone finally repeated what I said in the very first reply on this thread.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

Professor Thump — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:12:28 GMT

bhendrix:
Hi Chuck,
The first thing we're going to work on is the rear window reflection in the sanctuary. When we listen over headphones, the vocals are clear and understandable, so this seems to be a room issue. The next step will be to use the KP-600s by themselves without the overhead center cluster. I still have some work to do to get the 600's up and running. Waiting for amps and EQ settings.

Bill,

I suspect your problems are related to the natural reverb of the room and not the signal processing. Especially if the master mix through headphones is acceptable. Major suspects are the brick and glass which both have low absorbtion coefficients. Parallel walls are terrible on top of this. Your flutter echo in the ceiling area above the curtains is probably ringing. A little wall treatment will improve the situation greatly. You can think of foam as an open window for sound. Once it hits the foam it does not reflect.

For the sound mix you best speaker cluster for a reverb free mix is probably the center cluster hanging. This is because it is more optimized for angles of the room. If you were to trace the rays of acoustics the stage speaker being parallel to the floor would radiate to the back wall and then reflect to the front parallel wall. The hanging speaker might project to the back wall but at a skewed angle which would then bounce to the floor and congregation. People absorb sound well, thus it will be better in a full house.

May I make this suggestion? If possible mix the vocals to mono and send them through the center cluster only. I am flying blind because I don't know the SPL mapping of each speaker cluster on the floor but the rear of the room would probably sound better with mono center only. You can then mix the instrument to the L/R stacks. Secondarily loud acoustic instruments could be contained in a plexiglass iso chamber. (drums are the main culpret) This would help to avoid fader creep from sound spilling over from the stage.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

colterphoto1 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:07:36 GMT

" If you put a person on stage without a mic and he shouts back at you, can you understand what he's saying?"

oooo, that's a good one. Take the whole PA out of the mix and listen to see if its the room.

Of course it doesn't take speaker placement into account, not unless you hang the 'shouter' up where the cluster is! LOL

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

DrWho — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:06:37 GMT

djk:
How does it sound with the center cluster doing vocals only, and no vocals in the LR mix?

Have you done this yet?

If you've got REW handy you could capture an impulse of your room and then I can convolve it with some music on my end to hear what you're hearing....I suppose we could look at the measurements too. An RT60 would probably tell you quite a bit in this scenario.

The only reason I want to hear it is because it's a lot easier to identify things rather than trying to sift through the noise of a measurement.

Have you verified that when the band is playing that the only thing you hear in the mic channel is the person's voice? And not bleedover from other instruments on stage?

What kind of processing do you have on FOH? Any feedback suprressors or other EQ trying to notch out feedback? With an SM58 you should be boosting the highs a bit, and cutting the lower mids (around 250-500Hz-ish). The low cut should definitely be engaged, but depending on the subwoofer implementation you'll probably need to cut the LF shelf a notch too.

If you put a person on stage without a mic and he shouts back at you, can you understand what he's saying?

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

colterphoto1 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:19:14 GMT

Bill, with the big stacks you'll be blowing away the parishoners in front while those in the back get no volume. If the sanctuary has any height at all, a hung system should give more even dispersion throughout the room. I don't think the KP600's are your answer. Plus I think they'd look pretty oppressive in there.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

bigrfish — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:26:49 GMT

Bill,

The KP 600's should be able to give you sufficient air movement without having to push hard enough to make the people perceive a "loud" PA system, and the parishoners/worshippers should be able to hear both themselves and the output of the house system with no problems. I know it is going to be worth it, all this concern and care and work. Godspeed as you get it done. Sounds like you are on the right track. When you get it "tweaked" and running as you like it, I would love to visit and "fellowship" with y'all!!

Chuck

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

bhendrix — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:09:04 GMT

Hi Chuck,

The first thing we're going to work on is the rear window reflection in the sanctuary. When we listen over headphones, the vocals are clear and understandable, so this seems to be a room issue. The next step will be to use the KP-600s by themselves without the overhead center cluster. I still have some work to do to get the 600's up and running. Waiting for amps and EQ settings.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

bigrfish — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:12:28 GMT

Bill,

Have you tried a BBE Sonic Maximizer in the signal chain? One thing I noticed about mine is that the phase correction or time-of-arrival modification makes it so that I can pretty much hear everything that is in the mix with a lot of airiness and freedom from effort compared to listening with it off or bypassed. I do not think I would ever want to go without it...subjectively on a nominal scale I would say I get about a 20-25% increase in the ability to hear everything. That seems to be its' main function.

Chuck

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

Professor Thump — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:45:19 GMT

Bill,

It is hard to answer this question with more specifics on the setup. I would start by having someone layout the design in a CAD model so you could predict the ALCONS (RT60) from the computer. ACOUSTACAD, CADP, or EASE can do this for you. I believe Roy has a copy. Until you compute the Array angles and absorbtion coefficients of the walls you will be running around in circles. Once you have it modeled you can go and adjust angles on the array and even placement of the array to optimize the setup for intelligibility. You can also adjust the sabines to the wall to see what treatment would give you. This could also be as simple as mic placement. Good source localization and good speaker placement are starting points.

Re: Speech intelligibility in PA

bigrfish — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:33:29 GMT

I saw a DIY project once where there was a floormat/switch thing that when the vocalist stepped up to the mic, it was turned on, and when he stepped back it was turned off. Don't know how they controlled transients, probably some kind of filtering network...but interesting.

There's more to do than you can imagine, and the hardest part is to get people to do things subtly different than they have been "doing it before".

good thread, guys...