How Loud is Too Loud? – Part 2 Monitors
I had a suggestion given to me to write about how loud is too loud for monitors. So here is the other side of the stage so to speak. In my opinion monitors are one of the hardest things to control. The sound engineer wants to keep them as low as possible so that the front of house mix is true for what the congregation is hearing and everyone on stage has another idea of how loud it should be. I know this probably never happens in your church, you know you have just turned on everything got all the levels set and the mix sounding good and then the guitar player wants to turn his amp up. Consequently, the next song and a half in practice results in the drummer playing louder, the bass player wanting himself turned up in the monitor, the keyboard player breaking one of the weighted keys because they have to play that hard to hear themself, and the singings asking for more vocal in their monitor. Of course, by the end of the song you’ve turned the mains all the way down because the monitors are so loud it’s killing the congregation. Ok, maybe it’s not quite that bad but you get the idea, and I’m sure it has happened to you in some form.
So how loud is too loud? Well, that it the million dollar question. From a purely technical standpoint I would fall back on what ear damage standards are for decibel levels. By the way OSHA has a great chart here that shows these levels. Basically though, if your stage volume or one particular monitor is over 92-95 db it’s probably causing some damage to the musicians. If this is happening I would suggest humbly talking to your worship pastor or pastor about having a meeting with the worship team about how to reduce stage volume for everyone’s benefit. Of course, everything in the first article is a valid reason for also reducing monitor volume. Among these one of the best reasons to lower stage volume is for clarity. Sometimes in small churches the musicians are too close to the monitor and the majority of the sound is hitting the musicians knees because of how close they are, so they want it turned up more so they can hear better. Unfortunately, everyone else on stage can hear that monitor better than the person using it. Additionally, pushing that much sound through a monitor can cause it to become muddy and distorted. At times it would be better to provide a basic clear mix and challenge the musician to focus on there sound in the midst of the context of the music.
At this point you are probably saying to yourself easier said than done. My response is – yep, but unless you can afford a nice drum cage, or a good set of electric drums, and in-ear monitors for everyone you are stuck with some stage volume. In-ear monitors do bring up one last partial solution to stage volume. Currently my church is using a combination of an Aviom Personal Monitor System and Shure Wireless Personal Monitor System
. These are very good starter products, particularly the Shure system because you can buy just the pack and use it wired and later add the wireless transmitter. By incorporating in-ear monitors it is possible to lower stage volume. Adding in-ears can be done over time as well, so don’t think you have to go all or none with them. Every little bit counts.
Use the comments to tell me what you think, don’t forget to subscribe to comments to stay up-to-date with this article, and click on the RSS feed to have new articles from my website notify you…..thoughts?
Thanks Darin, that really helps to make the whole moniter thing make sense.