Sound

Getting rid of Feedback – Part 1.

Apparently, the US has been selling sonic blasters to China as a non-lethal weapon against ‘rioters’. These devices emit ’high-energy acoustic waves that are said to be, at close proximity, louder than a jet engine. It is capable of reaching 150 decibels, enough to incite panic, inflict pain, and even cause hearing loss among large crowds’ … they could have just asked me, I figured out how to do this in church years ago.

There are few things quite as distracting in church than a good dose of loud, high pitched feedback. And nothing else causes the entire congregation to spin around and glare at the sound person quite as much either.

So I thought it might be a good idea to run a few posts on understanding the causes of feedback and some techniques for stopping it.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that feedback is caused by sticking a mic close to a speaker and that you can stop it by turning the mic down, or moving it away from the speaker. But there’s a bit more too it than that. And understanding it better gives us a few extra strategies in the tool box to kill it.

© 2008 Check 1-2.