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Phoenix Technologies specialise in church sound systems installation.
Our designers will engineer your church sound systems for maximum audio intelligibility.
This page addresses some of the frequent qusetions customers ask.
For information on our installation service, and for a quote, please go to our
church sound system home page.
Need a church sound systems ?
We offer a full installation service for all your
church needs.
Click here
for prices and information.
Radio microphones in Church sound systems - pros and cons
At first sight, radio microphones represent the ideal solution for such
a system, and indeed, for certain
applications they are the only solution, but they do have a number of drawbacks:
The sound quality is never quite as good as with a wired microphone as, inevitably,
losses occur in the transmission process. They do, additionally suffer from radio
interference, and "dropouts" where the signal is temporarily lost when moving around
due to physical structures such as metal girders or electrical cables causing signal
dead spots within the church. Radio interference can vary from slight hiss
and crackle,
right up to a rogue minicab transmission being suddenly broadcast within the
church speakers,
complete with colourful language! Modern equipment is far more immune to this
type of interference, but it can still happen!
Since the absence of wires offers the freedom to roam throughout the auditorium,
care needs to be taken not to wander too close to a speaker, as sudden feedback
could occur.
Lastly, special care needs to be taken when using lapel microphones, namely to
switch them off when no longer needed. They are so unobtrusive that the user
forgets that they are still "on-air", and an unguarded or private comment is
broadcast loudly and clearly (the system having been designed with just this
in mind!) throughout the whole auditorium.
In the UK, only a few unlicensed frequencies are available for radio microphone
use, which in practice limits the number of units which can be used simultaneously
(they each need a separate frequency) to three. In addition to interference
effects, anyone using a similar microphone within a few hundred metres will
also be picked up by the system.
In short, although radio microphones can be invaluable in certain applications,
some thought needs to be given to their use in any given situation, especially
in a church system.
Microphones
Microphone fall into one of two categories: dynamic and condenser.
Dynamic microphones are like loudspeakers in reverse - they consist of a coil of
wire suspended in a magnetic field, which generates a tiny electric current when
vibrated by sound waves. This type of microphone tends to be quite bulky and sensitive
to magnetic interference such as mains hum or induction loop systems which are often
present in churches.
They are gradually being superseded by condenser (or electret) microphones.
These can be made very small indeed without sacrificing quality, and consist of a
very thin charged membrane which produces a varying signal voltage in response to
sound vibrations. No magnetism is involved, so they are virtually immune to
interference pickup making them suitable for use in churches.
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