A Sound Event

You’re in a train station. You’re running late. You have minutes to catch the last train. You look up at the board and see the words “Platform change — listen for announcement” scroll by. A touch of feedback alerts you to the all-important impending announcement. But as the voice begins to tell you what you need to know, your heart sinks — the sound is way too garbled to make heads or tails of.

That’s an extreme example of the biggest problem most meeting planners face when it comes to sound: intelligibility, or how well listeners can understand what’s being said. Most meeting venues are nowhere near as acoustically challenging as, say, Grand Central Station, but the degree to which intelligibility can be improved directly correlates with how effectively your message comes across.

Fortunately, taking a few simple steps can ensure effective sound for your events.

Understand the space, and make sure that whoever is handling your audio does too.
The nature of a venue largely determines what type of sound system is best suited to it.

Large, reverberant halls need more points of coverage — more and smaller loudspeakers strategically located rather than fewer larger ones. This brings the point-source of the sound closer to the listener, lessening reflections that bounce off the walls and interfere with intelligibility. Some spaces like these can be further enhanced with acoustical treatments such as curtains, which absorb sound reflections.

Ask the right questions

It helps to ask AV professionals the right questions.

Have they ever worked in this particular venue before? What equipment do they feel is needed?

Also ask to view their equipment list and look for quality — AV professionals’ success and reputation depend largely on the equipment they use, so their pedigree can be easily judged this way. Quality loudspeakers, such as those from JBL Professional, can make a world of difference.

Ask, too, how large an array of equipment the AV company offers — you want a provider to be able to scale systems up or down according to the parameters of the space, not impose a one-size-fits-all approach.

Finally, ask the sound technician to “shoot” the room using software that can model the acoustics and predict how sound will react in the space.

What’s the content?

The human voice has a relatively narrow frequency range. But add music into the mix and the frequency requirements of a sound system expand dramatically. A useful solution here is a three-part center cluster of speakers in which the middle group of loudspeakers is optimized for voice and the left and right groups are optimized for stereo music reproduction. If music is very important to the event, you may also want to consider a system with subwoofers.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

The same should apply to your sound system. Give the AV professionals access to your scripts and speaker lineups, as well as what kinds of video and multimedia aids speakers and presenters may use. Walk through at least part of several key presentations from the locations they’ll be using to ensure consistent coverage and identify any “dead spots.”

Work with what you’ve got

Sometimes a venue, such as a hotel ballroom, may not be able to offer more than the installed sound system (known as distributed sound), generally consisting of recessed ceiling speakers. This can lead to significant savings — but only if the system performs!

In larger ballrooms it’s often a good idea to employ some kind of delay system, such as those offered by DBX Professional. This will literally delay the sound electronically in milliseconds to the speakers, successively from the front to the back of the room, so that it remains intelligible all the way to the rear. (Sound moves more slowly through the air than it does as an electrical impulse; delaying the signal to the speaker allows the sound and the signal to arrive concurrently.)
Additionally, ceiling speakers can cause a perceptual disconnect between the sound and the person on the stage, making the voice seem almost disembodied, especially if a video or PowerPoint presentation is also vying for audience attention. A good solution is to have a few small speakers set up in front of or on the stage to provide directional cues for the audience.

Go wireless

People like wireless microphones because they become an extension of their ability to express themselves. Your AV specialist should know what the available frequencies are at your event site. However, as wireless systems proliferate, it’s a good idea to use wireless microphone systems, such as those from AKG Acoustics, that can scan for and resolve frequency conflicts automatically.

Additionally, wireless microphones are often used for audience Q&A, meaning they’ll be handed around the venue. In rehearsal, walk a wireless microphone through the house to make sure there are no dropouts caused by local interference, such as iron beams concealed in drywall.

Wireless microphone systems should also employ some type of automatic feedback reduction because audience microphones will sometimes be inadvertently turned toward the cone of a speaker, creating a feedback loop.

Finally, recognize that in an era of surround-sound cinemas and home theaters, people’s expectations of sound quality are much higher. People want concert-level audio at their events, and that’s why more of that technology is migrating to the meeting environment. So make the effort to secure the best technology, and test the system thoroughly. You’ll receive the ultimate compliment a sound system can get: “We never even knew it was on.”