Taipale Media Systems

01/04/2026

Posted on FB by Hey Audio Student 😎

12/17/2025

Texas Church Is UNDER FIRE For Its Christmas Show
And Here's Why I'm Okay With It!

This guy shares some real insight on the production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRFtg_kewxI

There are lots of detractors on social media, most of whom have never seen the show, but want to blame the church anyway.

FWIW, I mixed FOH at Prestonwood Baptist for over three years, including the "Dallas Christmas Festival", and I can tell you firsthand that the story of Christ is front and center throughout.

Telling that story is heartfelt by every tech, singer, musician, actor, cast member, choir, and of course the entire staff.

Here are a couple of photos that I took from my FOH console during the show. This was in 2003, and I believe that was the first year they did the flying angels.

11/30/2025

Battery, Battery, Wherefore Art Thou My Best Battery?

Testing EVERY BATTERY to Find the Winner by Lumencraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ_tGjXm0Ng

Here's his spreadsheet. (Google doc)
https://bit.ly/AA_Battery_Comparison

11/30/2025

Cyber Monday Deal for CSBC Course

Hey Y'all. Here's your chance to build confidence in your tech team members and save money at the same time. We've just posted our Cyber Monday Deal for the Church Sound Boot Camp course.

Enroll your team before Midnight this Monday for half-price.
$97 for individuals, $65/person for groups of three or more.

Lots of our members here have been through the course, and you know how good it is. And for those of you who haven't, what are you waiting for!?!

Even students who have been "doing sound" for 20 years have told us that they learned stuff through the course, and re-learned stuff they had forgotten.

Enroll your team here:
https://churchsoundbootcamp.ticketspice.com/csbc-self-guided-course

Here's our landing page if you need more details.
https://churchsoundbootcamp.com

Transform your team's audio skills through the confidence of knowing not only HOW to make improvements to your sound, but WHY they’re taking each of those steps.

The Church Sound Boot Camp is a proven, time-tested online course that can quickly transform your sound team beginners into confident pros.

11/23/2025

It turns out that I really messed up.

When I put together the Church Sound Boot Camp course, that actually I developed over at least 30 years or more, I approached it like providing the information that I thought I wanted when I was first starting.

I wanted to know about consoles.

I wanted to know about mic technique.

I wanted to know about EQ, about compressors, about everything like that.

And so when I built the course, I just shared everything I felt was important to share.

I mean, it’s not the sum total of everything I know about audio.

I've been doing this for 45 years.

But these were the nuggets that I felt that any young, aspiring church sound tech, or seasoned tech for that matter, would want to know about how to best operate their sound system.

Come to find out that the folks that are building courses these days tell me that that's not actually what I'm supposed to do.

I'm supposed to hold back.

I'm supposed to give you just a little bit of information to start with.

If you want more after you study the first part, then I'm supposed to give you more.

And that totally makes sense.

I get that.

But I have this Course called the “Church Sound Boot Camp” that is really comprehensive.

It covers everything that you would need to know to properly operate a good sound system in a church.

So, you can take my mistake.

You can enroll in the course and literally learn everything -- in a comprehensive way -- that you need to know about how to properly operate your sound system.

You'll come away knowing not only how to do it, but why you're doing each step.

And that's really the value in the course.

Now, I guess what I need to do is go ahead and design some new courses and withhold and just give you the basics.

And then maybe a little bit more in the next level.

And then maybe a little more in another level.

But for now you've got access to this "Church Sound Boot Camp" that, again, covers everything that you need to know about operating your sound system.

How to understand everything about EQ, about compression, about expanders, about your loudspeakers.

How do you know your loudspeakers are working properly?

How to drive that console.

How to choose a microphone.

How to place that microphone.

It's all there.

So, if I were you, I’d take me up on this challenge and go ahead and study the course.

I think you’ll enjoy it.

Let me know what you think.

It’s called the "Church Sound Boot Camp"

You can learn more at "https://churchsoundbootcamp.com"

Hope to see you there.

Bye for now.

11/20/2025

De-Feedback. No, really, it's a thing.

Anyone here using this anti-feedback tool from Alpha Labs? Pretty impressive demo video. Check it out.

https://www.alphalabsaudio.com/defeedback/

Digging deeper. For those who like to live in the technical weeds, a friend of mine found this super in depth presentation about how De-Feedback works. Worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7cdYgO1Rj4

A demo and explanation of the world's first AI based zero-latency de-feedback and anti-reverberation plug-in for live sound. Try it for free at https://www.d...

11/15/2025

Here's a photo of my loudspeaker design for the Fellowship Hall at Palm West Community Church in the Phoenix area. My contact at the church was Doug Totel.

I mentioned in another post how great it is when I get to work with a church sound tech who knows their stuff. Doug worked at Shure microphones for years before retiring to Arizona, and he was a delight to work with. Great ears!

For those interested, the loudspeakers are Danley SH50's with SH95's for the downfills and the sidefills. And in the center is a flown Fulcrum passive cardioid subwoofer.

The project was completed in 2024. I spoke with Doug just recently and they still love the system. The folks at Clearwing in Phoenix did a great job installing the system for me.

11/14/2025

I can't believe this project is from 2013. These photos are from the first service for The Gathering in Gadsden, Alabama. (Yes, I get around.)

I always enjoy helping churches align their vision of delivering a profound encounter with God for their congregation with high-quality audio, video and acoustics. And I'll admit that the projects that are the most fun for me are when the sound tech at the church knows his stuff. My friend Wade Russell was the lead audio tech there, and man can he mix! So much fun.

By the way, it's an LCR system with a flown cardioid sub array (EV mains, Danley subs and downfills), plus some Renkus-Heinz delay loudspeakers up in the balcony. PDH (Paul Hendrix) did the install for me.

This is so weird, but thinking of that project brought back a memory of the major name brand hotel that I stayed at that week -- I discovered ants coming out of the bathroom sink. 🙁 Go figure. They moved me to a new room.

11/13/2025

I was blessed with the opportunity in 2023 to design a new loudspeaker system for the performing arts center at Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas. Actually, the room is a full size basketball court but with another half court added on that serves as the stage for the school's very active drama department.

As usual, we provided structural loading requirements at specific locations for our loudspeakers and told the school that they should have those details signed off on by the building's structural engineer. To everyone's amazement, the report came back with a "hard no!" Worse yet, the building's roof had been designed to within a gnat's hair of its capability. IIRC, the limitation was ~30 lbs per square foot. (Or was it 15 lbs??)

My design had eleven Danley SH50's and five Danley TH118 subs all suspended from the ceiling. So we were at an impasse, and began looking at alternatives. Like maybe we should mount column line arrays to the sidewalls!?!

And we weren't the only ones asking. Our friend, Keith Buresh, was hired to totally redesign their theatrical lighting system, which meant quite a bit more weight to be suspended from that ceiling.

Hoping against hope, we asked what it might cost to bring the structural capability of that roof up to handle our loads at those specific locations. It took several weeks to hear the answer but the school finally agreed to add the steel necessary to bolster the structural integrity of the roof to handle weights for the audio and lighting gear.

My apologies -- I don't have a great photo of the space. This was taken when I was voicing the system during commissioning. Anyone here have a similar (painful) installation story?

11/12/2025

What do you do when you need to choose loudspeakers for a basement event space with a super low ceiling. It needs to be small but it also needs to sound great and cover the space. A few years ago Wyatt Johnston at Fellowship Bible Church in Topeka asked me to help him choose the loudspeakers for just such a space.

The most logical answer was the NEXO ID24i with its companion sub. I heard it years ago at a NEXO demo in Dallas, and "surprising" doesn't even begin to describe it. That thing is super tiny (5.2" x 12.2" x 9.2") and yet it sounds huge and can get quite loud. It's not inexpensive, and needs to be driven by their processor to get that level of performance out of it!!! But wow!

11/12/2025

I had a great time tuning the loudspeaker system at Community Bible Church in Baton Rouge, LA. (May 2025) Their loudspeaker array comprises three PreSonus CDL12 modules coupled together to make a short line array. The PreSonus CDL12 has a dispersion pattern of 120° horizontal and 20° vertical. Tightly combining three modules provides an overall pattern of 120° horizontal and 60° vertical.

They were experiencing significant gain-before-feedback problems with mics on the platform. Although the array covers the room well (even the tech mezzanine), take a close look at its placement. It's tucked up high, near the peak of the ceiling. The moment I saw that I thought to myself "this can't be good." 😎

That seems logical, until you consider what's happening with that 120 degree horizontal dispersion pattern. It's absolutely slamming the steep pitch of the ceiling, and you can absolutely hear it as you walk across the platform!

In my follow up summary of observations and recommendations, I needed to find a way to explain to their project team what's happening. Just talking about it wasn't going to help them, so I built a quick EASE model and did some ray tracing to illustrate the issue. Take a look at the illustration and you'll quickly see what the problem is.

I wonder, have you seen situations similar to this? What problems did it create?

11/11/2025

We designed the new loudspeaker system for FBC of Kingstowne in Alexandria, VA using Fulcrum passive cardioid loudspeakers plus a Fulcrum subwoofer embedded into the center stage thrust. Designed in 2023, finally got installed in 2024.