Being of sound mind – now that’s a laugh!

“The work we do on ourselves becomes our gift to everyone else.” Source Unk.

For the past several years I have been sort of the on-site audio-video guy for our church.* When everything shut down for the pandemic I found myself watching the church’s earliest efforts of doing worship online and absolutely hated the experience. It wasn’t that it was online (sometimes being away from people can be nice), but that it was being projected from a stationary laptop with horrible audio and video quality.

I’m not a technical expert, but I do know how to plug cables in and out of ports, so I offered to help, bringing in a decent video camera, amp/mixer, and microphones and, over a period of a few months, assembled enough hardware, gizmos, and adapters to produce a halfway-decent experience for online worshipers. 

As things returned to normal, we continued our online presence so that those who could not attend church (for age, health, or other reasons) could continue to join us. The internet allows us to extend the church’s altar rails in ways we’d never been able to before.

The parish recently upgraded its audio equipment, installing a new speaker array and sound-board. Our goal was to enhance the quality of sound within the church itself, as well as to improve the audio portion of our ZOOM presentations. The video quality was fine, but the online audio continued to be horrible, especially regards to the music. Our microphones were working properly, but for some reason the signals were simply being lost somewhere between the mixer/amplifier and the listeners at home.

Nate, the technician who fine-tuned the newly installed system, and who does the audio work for his own church, came out several times to try to diagnose and fix the problems. We really didn’t know if it was the equipment failing us, operator error (remember, I haven’t been of sound mind in years), or some other issue. It was as baffling to him as it was to us, which was good. I hate being alone in my confusion.

Nate came, hooked everything up to his diagnostic equipment, tested all the components, and finally conducted a ZOOM call with one of his co-workers back at the shop. Bizarrely, they put me on piano so they could replicate our worship experience while they listened and diagnosed. I do NOT play piano, and even struggle to play chopsticks on the instrument. If one ever wants to experience perdition, they need go no further than to attend a piano recital where I am the featured performer. On a positive note, when I stop, the silence is quite heavenly.

In any case, they discovered the source of the problem was not with either the equipment or the operators, but with ZOOM. There is apparently an audio option that is not found in the audio or advanced settings menus. Instead, there is a tiny pop-up option on the video screen itself that is only visible on the monitor when scrolling across the video feed. The purpose of that programming toggle is to eliminate background noise so that when people are on a call, all the extraneous noise (like dogs barking, toilets flushing, music playing) is filtered out. That’s very helpful for folks who work from home. 

However, for worship, it means that everything we want the folks online to hear is filtered out by default, and the App simply needs to be toggled ON to allow that “background” noise to become part of our corporate worship. The option was always there; we simply ignored it, not really seeing it, knowing what it meant, or what it was for.

 Now that we know what to look for and what to do, we can flip the switch and focus on the tasks at hand – making a joyful noise unto the Lord, and scattering the seed (also known as “broadcasting") to the furthest reaches of the Lord’s fields. 

We live, we ask questions, we seek experts, and we learn. It’s as simple as that, which sounds good enough for me here in this, our valley.

* I should note I am ably assisted by Michael Boss, Ben Worrell, and Jen McCabe in the loft. This is NOT a solo gig!!!

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)