Chapel sound system giving me migraines

[megcordon]

I just moved to a new ward. The first week I attended, the sound was very uncomfortable. It was too loud and male speakers too close to microphone created an echo. It triggered a migraine and my ears hurt for many days. I asked a couple of members if they heard the echo. They acknowledged that many others have been bothered by the sound system over the years, though I no one heard the echo but me. I am quite musical, so perhaps I am more sensitive than some others. The following week, I wore earplugs in sacrament meeting, which helped with the volume, but made voices muffled to me. I measured sound levels with an app on my phone. In testimony meeting, some of the participants were registering at about 70 decibels. Fifty decibels should have been fine. I am told that the ward has several members who are hard of hearing, and they request the sound turned way up because they cannot understand some women speakers otherwise. On the other hand, the male speakers echo and give me a migraine. Couldn't Bishopric adjust the volume according to who is speaking? I'm sure they could.

I plan to talk to Bishop and possibly Stake President about the problem. However, I fear they won't take me seriously, because other members have raised the issue over the years and nothing has been done. Or perhaps someone looked into it and couldn't find a solution. In my 57 years of church activity, I've never been in a chapel before that triggered a migraine and caused ear pain and loud ringing for days after the meeting. I may need to start attending church in a different building. I'd rather stay in the ward I live in.

I know that a combination of updating the microphone; education on the sound system, strategies for adjusting amplitude and maintaining proper distance from microphone; as well as installing sound some absorption and sound diffusion materials on the walls would help a lot. What I don't know is how easy or difficult it would be to implement these improvements. Would take money as well as education.

What resources might be available from Salt Lake or the local Physical Facilities? Perhaps church leaders aren't aware of resources, and believe nothing can be done.

[russellhltn]

It would be up to the local leaders to notify the Facilities Management (FM) Group there's a problem. FM has a contract with a professional sound company who handles all the sound systems in the area.

Looking at various charts, 70 dB doesn't seems unreasonably loud. Keep in mind that each 10 dB is perceived twice or half as loud. Thus 70 is twice as loud as 60, but half has loud as 80.

An echo would suggest you're catching the sound from more than one speaker. You might try a different location in the chapel.

As far as ear plugs, most are designed to protect hearing or allow sleeping. You may have to upgrade to ones designed to protect the hearing of musicians while still allowing them to hear the music. You're more likely to find those in a music store than in a pharmacy.

For those who are hard of hearing, the church should have Assisted Listening receivers (frequently in the library) that can be loaned to members. But it's possible those are lost or in some unknown state.

Good luck with your conversation with the leaders.

[davesudweeks]

Apps installed on phones must be calibrated if you want to rely on them. If you have not calibrated your app, the actual sound could be louder or softer than the app is reporting. I would speak with the bishopric and explain the problem. Ask them to request the FM group to investigate. If the FM group ignores the bishop (common in my experience) ask them to escalate to the stake presidency. I have found that the FM group listens to the stake president much more readily than any bishop or branch president.

I would be surprised if a professional sound company doesn't have a calibrated sound meter available to check the actual sound, but it may be that the bishopric just has the volume set too loud on their mic control and they don't realize it.

[CalS201]

Sound travels 11.3ft in 11.3ms. A person with a critical ear for sound (I mean that in a good way) can hear a constant echo when the same sound arrives at their ears from two sources if 1 source is 10 feet away and the other source is more than 30 feet away (a person can perceive a 20ms difference). This can occur if you sit on the front row of the chapel and can hear the overhead speakers and the person at the pulpit. Echo can also be heard if you sit near an overflow area that has a lowered ceiling (and speakers) and you also hear the cultural hall or chapel speakers. To correct this the FM audio technical can simply adjust the volume level for speakers that are far away.

Sometimes the echo you perceive is caused by the system gain being too high and feedback starts to set in at some frequencies. This type of echo/feedback/reverb may appear to be momentary and only occur at specific frequencies. You may hear it more with male speakers or possibly more with female speakers or only with loud speakers. To correct this the FM audio technician must re-equaize the chapel sound system and re-adjust the system gain.

Because things will sound different in a empty chapel versus a full chapel it would be helpful if you could make a audio recording on your phone and share it with the Bishop AND the audio technician. If the technician can hear the problem HIMSELF then he CAN fix it!

[johnshaw]

I just moved to a new ward. The first week I attended, the sound was very uncomfortable. It was too loud and male speakers too close to microphone created an echo. It triggered a migraine and my ears hurt for many days. I asked a couple of members if they heard the echo. They acknowledged that many others have been bothered by the sound system over the years, though I no one heard the echo but me. I am quite musical, so perhaps I am more sensitive than some others. The following week, I wore earplugs in sacrament meeting, which helped with the volume, but made voices muffled to me. I measured sound levels with an app on my phone. In testimony meeting, some of the participants were registering at about 70 decibels. Fifty decibels should have been fine. I am told that the ward has several members who are hard of hearing, and they request the sound turned way up because they cannot understand some women speakers otherwise. On the other hand, the male speakers echo and give me a migraine. Couldn't Bishopric adjust the volume according to who is speaking? I'm sure they could.

I plan to talk to Bishop and possibly Stake President about the problem. However, I fear they won't take me seriously, because other members have raised the issue over the years and nothing has been done. Or perhaps someone looked into it and couldn't find a solution. In my 57 years of church activity, I've never been in a chapel before that triggered a migraine and caused ear pain and loud ringing for days after the meeting. I may need to start attending church in a different building. I'd rather stay in the ward I live in.

I know that a combination of updating the microphone; education on the sound system, strategies for adjusting amplitude and maintaining proper distance from microphone; as well as installing sound some absorption and sound diffusion materials on the walls would help a lot. What I don't know is how easy or difficult it would be to implement these improvements. Would take money as well as education.

What resources might be available from Salt Lake or the local Physical Facilities? Perhaps church leaders aren't aware of resources, and believe nothing can be done.

Trust your hearing, if others notice is there is a problem. The church pays a company to maintain these systems for us and there is Absolutely NO REASON not to ask for a review of the system. There are others in this thread that gave you very vague advice about contacting Facilities. ALL YOU NEED is for a member of the Bishopric to log a ticket to the FIR (which is the tool that logs tickets to the facilities dept) - Explain to them all the things you said here and ask that the sound system have a 'health check' - It's not that hard, the facilities management group is no longer a 'fiefdom' that it has been in the past where sometimes logging a ticket to them was like questioning their 'ability' to do things. Well, we now have farmed it out to a very large facilities coordinating company and they bring in the experts they need to do the work.

Also, if you ask around there are very often men in your ward or stake that have been employees and have sound system expertise. I have one in my ward, in my pervious stake we had one as well. They can advise you on the specifics of what the problem could be so when the Bishopric member logs the ticket it'll be responded to as well.

good luck, it shouldn't be this hard, but seriously, our tithing pays for this stuff, use it.

[sbradshaw]

I wonder if it's possible to have high volume in one place and low volume in another? Then the people who are hard of hearing can sit where the volume is high, and people sensitive to high volumes can sit where the volume is low.

I suppose another option might be sitting in the foyer with the speaker in the foyer providing audio, but that could be awkward in terms of members wondering why you're in the foyer, and distracting if there's more than one ward overlapping in the building.

[russellhltn]

I wonder if it's possible to have high volume in one place and low volume in another? Then the people who are hard of hearing can sit where the volume is high, and people sensitive to high volumes can sit where the volume is low.

I suppose it's possible, but the hard of hearing should be using assistive listening devices rather than blasting the congregation.

[RyanGard1977]

Request that a FIR be submitted requesting that the chapel, overflow (if one) and cultural hall audio be re-balanced due to echo and the headaches indicated. The hard of hearing should be making use of the COMTEK or LISTEN hearing assist devices that each standard meetinghouse should be equipped with.