well written. I have only skimmed so far, but am a beginner in sound at church & am glad to have this.

Good book in cover.full colored.great.useful info.

This is great for anyone who has a passion for sound and loves the church like myself. I'm volunteer head of Multimedia at my church with only experience at my church. So I got it to increase my knowledge to grow my church multimedia and it has done the job beautifully

I bought this book specifically because I saw that the first 7 chapters discuss non-technical church-related sound issues. I find this book very useful. I got a lot out of it, and have loaned it to others. The illustrations are very well done, adding a lot of information and making the book easy to understand. There is a lot of very practical information for a contemporary church. As a volunteer on the soundboard at a mid-sized church, I find a lot in this book that I can directly apply. For instance, I now understand that doubling the number of open mics puts the system 3dB closer to feedback. There are also some sections that do not directly apply to me, but are still interesting. For example, because we use electronic drums, the information on how to mic drums does not directly apply to me. I highly recommend this book for others in my position. I also highly recommend that non-technical church leadership read at least the first 7 chapters to understand what is required to effectively run a modern sound system, what are the issues, and be able to interface with the people like me who run it.

Full of good information that is explain in a clear way. Definitely recommend this book for those who are beginners at sound systems!

If you have done sound in any shape or form, you would agree that this is a wonderful resource,not just in a church setting but anywhere amplified sound is needed. I find the writer has a wonderful perspective on all areas that affect you as a sound engineer. I came across it at church, someone had it behind the sound board and picked it up and started looking through it. I felt that I needed this as a resouce. This is a must if you are having any problems technically or personally with people that you may have to deal with in this type of ministry, work, or fun. As you probably know this is most of the time a thankless position, only acknowledged when there is a problem. Takes a thick skin to stick with it. It is rewarding when you have a musician/artist come up and personally thank you for doing a good job!

I am an acoustical and systems design consultant who specializes in the design and functional rehabilitation of worship facilities. I recently purchased this book as part of a survey of available literature for possible use when training the operators of the sound systems I design. I had high hopes for this book, since it is colorfully illustrated and comes with a DVD that could be used to more clearly illustrate the fundamentals of live audio, which the book purports to teach.

In order to teach the fundamentals of sound reinforcement, one must have a very high level of mastery of technical concepts in a variety of disciplines, including acoustics, electronics, and psychoacoustics. In addition, one must have the ability to communicate this type of information clearly and succinctly to a non-technical audience. Unfortunately, nearly all of the chapters of this book contain at least some significant misconceptions about audio, ranging from the common to the truly bizarre. The fact that almost none of the information in the book is referenced, or otherwise attributed to the sources from which it came, even though the same topics are covered in many books of varying degrees of authority, should tip off the savvy reader that further scrutiny is warranted. The lack of a reference or resource list also denies the reader any help in locating the numerous excellent learning resources that have been developed for church and secular sound operators in recent years. The fact that book freely intermixes misinformation with reasonably accurate information will make it almost impossible for any person new to audio to discern which is which.

In addition to the many inaccuracies, many basic concepts of audio are explained in ways that are confusing even to bona fide experts in the field. Gibson frequently applies analogies that do not apply to the concepts at hand, such as the attempt to liken the incompatibility of differently-sized water pipes to the concept of electrical impedance. At other times, Gibson will make a reasonably clear but inaccurate statement, and then contradict it a few paragraphs or chapters later. This also happens in his attempt to discuss the concept of impedance, as well as his attempt to explain how to set the input gain of a mixer's channel strip. The reader unfamiliar with audio may not even catch the contradiction, and will only be aware of her or his own confusion. Finally, many crucial concepts that sound reinforcement operators need to be exposed to are omitted, while many pages are wasted on information that is unrelated to sound reinforcement or to church technical operations.

For example, one of the worst chapters is chapter 9, which exhibits a profound misunderstanding of the concept of impedance and of basic signal interfacing principles, parrots widely discredited sales claims about expensive "high futility" audio cables, leads readers to choose the wrong type and gauge of speaker wire, mixes up the characteristic of common types of speaker connectors, and encourages the widely discredited and potentially life-threatening practice of disconnecting legally mandated safety grounds as a means of hum reduction.

Examples of filler material include chapter 14 (Loudspeakers), which repeats a lot of information from unattributed sources about design aspects of loudspeakers with which the user never interacts, and many of which are only found in home stereo speakers or studio monitors, rather than sound reinforcement speakers. Most of the significant parameters for the selection of sound reinforcement speakers, as well as any help in understanding the process or qualifications necessary to design a sound reinforcement system, are omitted. Similarly, chapter 19 (Acoustic Considerations) deals almost exclusively with small-room acoustical concepts, as would be relevant to a recording studio or home theatre, rather than the large-room concepts, as are relevant to a church auditorium or other public assembly facility.

In short, there are much better books available on both the technical aspects (Eiche's Guide to Sound Systems for Worship) and spiritual/organizational aspects (Curt Taipale's The Heart of Technical Excellence) of church audio. In general, the less familiar a reader is with a technical subject like audio, where misconceptions and false "experts" abound, the more they must take care to seek out only reliable sources in their effort to learn the basics. The awkward situation that this book's author and publisher created for themselves could have been avoided by a number of methods, such as by having a qualified audio professional fact-check the manuscript, or by involving multiple authors who were recognized experts in their respective specialties. While Gibson does provide some useful insights on non-technical subjects such as rehearsing and mixing contemporary music, the damage done by this book far outweighs the good. Members of my profession already spend too much of our time cleaning up costly messes caused by the very types of misconceptions promulgated by this book.

I am the sound engineer at a small Baptist church. My background is R&R drummer and sound engineer at other larger churches. This book not only taught me more about sound, but helped me apply the knowledge to the entire church family. There's as much about attitude as there is about amplitude. This truly is the 'ultimate' church sound operator's handbook. It's relatively cheap, too.