 Hi everyone, welcome back. All right, let's just continue from where we left off. Just to share the screen more time. So we spoke about microphones, we spoke about microphone microphones, a mixing console and what it does and the equalizer console and the amplifiers and what it does. And I'll also share this PBT with you all if you want it, but everything is there in your notes already. So just to continue from what we were talking about after the amplifiers, there are speakers. You know what the speaker does, it just gives the output of everything that is happening without. Every gear, every single gear, think about it is so crucial, isn't it? If you don't have a microphone, you will not be heard. If you have a microphone and you don't have an amplifier or a mixing console, there's nothing to receive the signal that's coming from the microphone. And then if you don't have the speakers and you have the microphone and a mixing console, there is no output, right? So, and these are the basic gears that every church would need to have doesn't matter the size of the congregation at all, like the microphone, the mixing console, the amplifier. If the speakers are not active, then you also need to have speakers, right? So that's where we're at. And this is another important piece of equipment. This is called a snake, right? So this is a snake. So what it does basically now is a person who's in charge of the mixing console who's at the mixing console is far away from the stage, isn't it? And so you need to have, so what this does is this thing, yeah, this part of the snake will be on the stage, right? And because we don't want to have like a 20 odd cables running from stage to the mixing console, we'll have just one big cable, one fat cable that looks like this goes from the stage all the way to the mixing console. And so, you know, there's no much mess around the stage and also coming from the stage all the way to the mixing console, right? Rohit, anything else to be noted about this gear? No, I think that's primarily just to have a clean run. One important thing, the mixer needs to be, the position of the mixer needs to be at a place where you can hear the speakers, which is why you're in front of the speakers. In some places I've noticed they've done it wrong and I don't know how they judge. They are either behind the speakers or on the side or on a different floor, you know? But ideally, you want to be where the center of the hall, where the speaker coverage is best. To reach, for your microphone to reach that position, you need something like this instead of running 20 cables, like you said. Right, okay. And this is also a little dated, isn't it, in terms of, and this is used only for analog mixers, which we discussed, right? So analog mixers have multiple connections like this. A digital mixer would just be one ethernet cable. Just an ethernet cable would go into one of those boxes, just like this. It looks the same, but it's just a single cable. But in this case, you'll have to plug in 20 connectors. Instead of that, it's just one. And so, again, this will turn out to be very expensive and risky, isn't it? Because, so this big fat, what is this tube or whatever, contains all these cables in it, right? All these things, the connectors and whatnot. If one of these connectors or one of these cables that's going through this snake tube, if it gets damaged or whatnot, it's a very time, it's a very painful job to actually open the snake and find out which cable has been damaged and then replace it. It's an expensive affair, isn't it? Quite tedious, quite tedious to figure out where, how, and all of that. And that's why the ethernet cable is a lot better. It's just one cable that runs from the stage all the way to the mixing console. Mixer console, isn't it? Yeah, and that's it. Okay, all right, cool. Okay, so that's the snake and these are all the FX processors, as in that ads delay and some of the things that we spoke about. And this one is what we call as the monitor speakers, guys. On this stage, these speakers will be set like this. So this is for people on the stage to hear what they are singing or what they are playing. This is more, again, old school, isn't it? As in some, not, I don't wanna say old school. This is still being followed, but what we use at APC Central, you will not find these speakers on the stage because we will all have something called the in-ear monitors, right? So we will have, we'll plug in to another cable and we will be able to hear what we are playing or what we are singing. And those are called in-ear monitors. It'll look like your phone, basically. That's why it's called in-ear because it's going inside your ears and that's an in-ear monitor. And these are just stage monitors, right? So again, if you have to invest in in-ear monitors, that's again, buying an extra gear. There's a lot of, again, money involved in that as well. And so I think for starters, we can just start off with the stage monitors, right? If you don't really have the budget for that at the moment, right? So that's the basic information regarding the sound and technology, the gadgets that you can use. But if you just take a look at page 64 in your notes, right? Now we talk about like the online, you know, if you want to record your services or your worship team that's playing, if you want to record some of the gadgets that you will require is what was shown earlier as an interface. This is now a very small interface. It has only two channels to it. That means I can only connect two instruments at a time. Either one microphone, one guitar or one keyboard or two instruments, one guitar, one keyboard, et cetera. And now there are bigger interfaces. Rohit, what's the biggest interface that you've seen as in terms of how many channels it has? You can scale up a lot. I mean, okay, but interfaces, maybe up to maybe 24, 50, 100, it depends on the application. You can go all the way to like 500,000 if the requirement demands it, but yeah. Right, okay. So this, remember guys. Just like that. Okay, yeah. So remember, this is too, if you want to record your worship services in just the audio part of it, right? So you will need to invest in something called a digital audio workstation, very famously known as DAW, DAW. So if you have a laptop and you have all these, some of the softwares that are recommended down, software recording, softwares for recording is Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, those are all the softwares. It's just not an exhaustive list used to record, okay? So why is this called an interface? It's like a bridge. So you have the laptop, you have this interface and then you have my instrument, say a keyboard or a guitar. So the computer doesn't understand the keyboard language. Computer only understands binary, isn't it? It speaks its own language. And so the computer needs and the instrument needs an interface that will translate, what do you say? Is that right, translate? Interpret that signal that it is receiving from the keyboard and then it changes that signal and it sends to the computer and then computer now understands the language. That's why an interface is important. If you choose to start recording your worship services and some of the brands are suggested guys, some of the suggestions like Scarlett 2.2, PreSonus, AudioBox, those are all some of the brands that you can explore if you want to record your worship services. That's just the audio, but audio is not sufficient these days, isn't it? We also want to record the video. So some of the suggestions that you can invest in is other high definition cameras. You can pick your own brand, some of I've suggested Canon R800, high definition cameras for you to being able to capture the video. And also a tripod stand that goes with it so that you can mount the camera on a tripod, et cetera. And some video editing softwares are also suggested. So that is iMovie, Final Cut Pro and whatnot. Right, you guys are still alive, right? You guys are okay. Okay, yeah, Christopher, go ahead. Oh yes, so in this recording infrastructure, let's just also take care of, particularly in the COVID times where you have people in different locations, maybe the guitarist at home and the keyboard somewhere else and everything. And they are also connected to some, I guess, some software. And then it goes through a mixer and everything. Does this also support this? Yes, that's pretty much what is done, Christopher. So let's say that you have a laptop and you are a guitarist and you have an interface, right? You can play a guitar part with the help of these gadgets. You can record it onto your system and then you can export that file and email it to me. And now I can say a play a keyboard part using the same setup that I have here and record with what you have already played. And that's what was done. That is what is being done as well in terms of, that's how technology helps. Like a guitarist in Australia can record and send it to someone sitting in the United States or in the other part of the world or India or wherever. And then we can record using the same gadgets. And so we can make a song from different parts of the world together. So that is the recording part. I guess we're done for the performance. Can this also support a live performance where the guitarist and the keyboard and the vocalist are all in different locations? I mean, if there is no fiving send, it's just, it's actually happening live. Right. See, I mean, the output will come but there will be, because of internet, there will be latency issues. Ruth, is that right? There will be, it will not be in sync unless, I don't know, you need to have like an amazing internet connection. Like everybody around the world needs to have that. Yeah. So the interface is the only way to connect to instrument and go to Zoom. But for everyone to sing together through a Zoom call, because of latency, it'll never sync together. That's why, like, simple example, have you ever tried singing happy birthday to someone in a Zoom call? No one will be in sync. So, like, that's an example of how that wouldn't work. But yes, the interface will function to do that. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Okay, so those are some of the suggestions for audio and video recording cameras and whatnot. But also, the last part of this chapter in page 65, it briefly touches about lighting as well. Lighting kind of, you know, it elevates the whole experience as well. You know, again, please don't get me wrong. You know, it's like something about using fancy lights and whatnot, we've made it all about that, okay, you know, if we are on a stage with all these amazing fancy lights, we've kind of made it in life or we kind of look for that spotlight moment. So worship is not all about that. And in all of these, everything what we're talking about are tools, are vessels to just serve better, to serve your congregation better, to elevate the experience better. That's the whole point of this, right? Nowhere in this is a competition with another church or showing off saying, okay, they have this, we have that, okay, we have ordered to better than that and whatnot. What works best for your church? How can you make your congregation experience the service better? That's the whole point of this, right? And so one of the aspects of that is lighting, right? Lighting systems for use in worship settings. It sets the mood, the atmosphere in the room. The room is bright, it's happier, it's celebratory, et cetera. If the room is, if the lighting is, let's say dull, it's minimal, there's a sense that, okay, it's gonna be more intimate, private and whatnot, right? But having said that, I'm not saying that you can, you cannot have intimate and private moments of worship if the room is bright. So regardless, you need to have that, it's just a vessel that's helping, right? A light should match the mood in the room, celebration as like a high tempo song is being played full lighting, light up the congregations so the congregation is seen, intimate moments, intimate worship, slower songs, lesser lighting will help, right? And I think these are all just suggestions, guidelines. You see what will work best for your congregation for the setting that you are in. One duplicate also is fine if that works for your setting. But that's what it is. And some of the softwares that are used for projection, projecting the lyrics of the songs, as I mentioned over there, which is like ProPresenter, EasyWorship, MediaShout are some of the softwares. What we use at APC is EasyWorship and ProPresenter. At Central, APC Central we use ProPresenter, at the locations we use EasyWorship to project the lyrics of the songs. It's good, those are all good investments to invest in, to make the experience better, right? And some of the resources I mentioned. Okay, so, I mean, is there anybody here? I know, Mangi, you take care of the sound part of your church, is that right? Yes, Pastor, yes, I do. Okay, so do you wanna share a little bit about your experience as in what you do and some of the gears that you have? And also the importance of a worship pastor understanding the sound guy, the sound head. Thank you, Pastor, thank you for the opportunity to share. It is, being a sound guy is overseeing the sound, it's not easy, because... All right, let's pause, okay? So, when Mangi started this point, he took a deep breath, he was like, so that's gonna give a gist, guys, of what a sound heads go through, okay? So their job is not easy. Sorry, Mangi, I had to interrupt and go ahead. I feel you, bro. Thank you, Pastor. Because congregation, you have different people, some who have hearing problems, some who just can't hear some frequency. They can only hear low frequency, they cannot hear high and some can hear high and low. And then you have people coming to some place and think, oh, this is too loud. I cannot hear that instrument. Oh, my daughter's voice is not good enough. So yeah, finding balance between all that. It is a challenge. And also, finding balance between buying new equipment and trained sound people or volunteer, that's also a big thing. So you can buy a lot of equipment and if your sound people are not equipped enough and don't have good ears, you have to love that sound and you can have good trained people and if you don't have good equipment for them to work with, it will also be a challenge. So finding the balance between that, that's what the challenge I get. Right, thanks, Mangi. I mean, he's just dropping some truth bombs over there as in you can buy all the equipments, but then if you don't have people who are equipped to handle that, man, Mangi, that's amazing. Yeah, the importance of it. So another question, Mangi, because is there anybody else who works, takes care of the sound in your churches? Okay, Mangi. So initially, as in what would you suggest in terms of say being patient with the senior pastor or whoever that you are, you know, is leading you? As in, so how do you handle situations like you've been asking about for a specific gear to enhance the experience that you've been asking and asking and asking, have you been in situations like that and how you handle situations like that and being patient, what do you do? Yeah, situation like that. At the beginning, it was difficult because pastor didn't see the need for all those equipment and once we insist on buying something, get something new and then they see the benefit that comes with getting new gear, then they create a sense of trust. Right. So when you tell them that we need to ask them for something, they will trust you because now they've, yeah, you've created that's like you say report, they trust you to do your job, you know what you're doing. So trust is the first thing. And the second thing is bringing an expert that's another voice from outside that will tell them, okay, you're getting this for this reason. Thank you. Right, okay. Thanks, Mangi. Yeah, that's wonderful insights there. Rohit, anything that you'd like to add, those challenges? I think from the top down, recognizing it, assigning a budget saying, this is what we want to do, getting an understanding of, I mean, just talking it out, basically. I mean, that just goes a long way. And just having that understanding of what you want to achieve, helping people relate with the tools that you know too well, but helping them understand the importance of it. And then take it from there, whatever your congregation can accommodate at whatever place, grow, keep pushing for more, yeah. Right, yeah. Thanks, Rohit, yeah. Yeah, I think, as in just, I mean, it's just so beautifully put in terms of, you know, winning your senior pastor's trust, as in, you know, we're investing in equipments and most of these equipments, depending on the size of the congregation, it can, the prices will vary, right? You can go and then before investing, they will need to know, okay, is this worth it and why we are doing it and also getting an expert's opinion. It will always help, yeah, thanks for that, Maggie. All right, guys, for everybody else, yeah, if you have questions, I was just gonna say that I wanna have, you know, leave this thing or time open for questions in terms of sound and technology. If you have any questions, you know, just please feel free to go ahead and either type it in the chat section or ask either me, Rohit, or even Maggie will, you know, be happy to answer those questions, right? Yes, Sahi, please go ahead. Thank you, Vasu. I just wanted to ask the place of maintenance of sound equipment, if you could just, what's the role with the worship team and the sound team in terms of maintenance of all this equipment? Yeah, thank you. That's a very good question, I think. So maintenance, maintaining the sound equipments, how does the worship team and the sound team work together to maintain the equipments that they are functioning well, everything is all read and good. Is that right, Sahi? That's correct, yes, that's correct. Okay, yeah, Rohit or Maggie, you want to add to it? Anyone? Yeah, I think first off, value the equipment you do have, yeah. Use it the way it's intended, anything that's pushed beyond limit. I'm talking about a speaker as an example, yeah. If you push too much, you might just damage the speaker and with smaller things like how you handle microphones, be extra careful, careful don't drop microphones. Let's say lyrics stands, if you have a camera, for example, like as you grow, things like that, just being intentional, understanding the value of what you have, yeah. And as you face problems, make sure, again, I think so many of these things come back to communication. If something goes wrong, make sure everyone knows about it on that day, yeah. So that next week when you come, you don't realize like 15 minutes before you start that this is not going to work. And then you're put in a tight spot of what are we going to do now, yeah. So address things as is, as and when they happen, yeah. And yeah, fine. I mean, if you can rectify the problem in-house, yeah, other you can do that. Otherwise you can get technical support from outside and you know, however, you can do regular maintenance as well over periods of time, just check everything, yeah. There'll be, there's always this bunch of equipment that's lying around in my corner that nobody touches, hasn't touched for months, years, whatever, but just occasionally go over it, yeah. Just run through everything you have, make sure everything is working well and you can repair whatever doesn't work, yeah. So I have a periodic check, okay. Maggie, anything that you would like to add? Like Rohit said, it's periodic check. Like what we do is things like a guitar and other instruments we recommend that every musician bring is on. So we only provide drums in the keyboard. So that's my responsibility. I have to make sure that everything it's working, it's tuned and yeah, it's working in the right condition but everything else like bass guitar, the player has to provide his own so that they can look after them and things like sound system, that's my responsibility. I have to go every day, not every day but every Saturday or Friday to make sure that I check everything and double check so that when the band comes in on Sunday, everything is working, so yeah. So everything is maintained, everything is serviced. Thank you. Right, thank you. Yeah, so periodic checks say and also checking and double checking as Maggie mentioned but another thing what we did at APC, Rohit, we had a training for the, I mean where the sound team did a training for the worship team members. They did a training on what this gadget does, what this device does, how to hold a mic, how far a mic should be, all that goes into maintaining so that and how to fold the mic stand, how to set up the mic stand, you don't just bend it, so you have to loosen the nut or the screw and then push it up. Most of us, I think bad habit what we do with the mic stand is we just hold the bottom part and we just push it up and on the long run, what happens, it damages the whatever the thing. But so there's a way to loosen the mic stand and set it up accordingly so that it lasts long. That's all maintaining, isn't it? So having a training, have us, either your sound team can do a training for your worship team members, how to fold the mic stand, how to set up the lyric stand or the music stand and how to roll the cables, it's very important. So at central, APC central, after the service, the worship team members are responsible for rolling the cables and there was a training for that as well. How you fold a cable, it can't be folded like at the end looking like a noodle or whatnot. It has to look beautiful. It has to, so that it lasts long. So training is one thing. And another thing I would suggest, say, is have an inventory of the equipments of your church. Have an inventory. So if something goes missing, you'll know it. And if something has gone for service, you will mark it, okay, get an amplifier has gone for service. So yeah, I hope that helps. That'd be beautiful. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you. Yeah, any other questions? Feel free to ask whatever it is like, if you're silly or small, whatever it is with regards to sound technology, just feel free to shoot it. Don't think you'll get this opportunity again. Sir, a small, after this COVID, ours is a very small congregation around 7,200. We had to invest in a mixer and because we also started to have online Zoom during the services so that only audio, not video. And it's a challenge for me to learn this sound and technology because I was very naive to that in the beginning, but now slowly learning it. I want to master it after listening to you and to find how to take care of sometimes emergency, sometimes the power goes off and immediately how to connect to the different gadgets is a challenge for me. So it's a very good and want to learn more about how it works and all that. Thank you, sir. Hey, Rupa. So, as in, is there's a question there, Rupa, or? I want more clarity about this, how to use this gadgets like mixer and all. Right, okay. Yeah, Rupa, so if there is a person as in who's handling sound and tech like this, I mean, just spending some time with that person, understanding the functions is important. So it's no longer a choice, I would say, that if I should know this or if I should learn in the day and age that we are living in, I would say it's a necessity for you to understand the basics of it. The basic fundamentals of how this online thing works, like how you connect the audio and things like that. It's become a necessity after since the pandemic I would say, so spend time and with the person that who's in charge or if you know of someone who can help you understand this, just spend like an hour or two, that's one thing. And then if you have questions, everything is on YouTube these days. That's another thing, Rupa, I would say. Rohit, is there anything that you would like to suggest? Yes, yes. I'm doing that most of the time. YouTube and yes. Yeah, it's... But once you feel very lost, that's what I wanted to learn more about it. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, Asha says, how much patience and focus does it require? For what, Asha? Anything specific? Life in general, you need a lot of patience and focus. Faster for the technologies that like the sound system and everything. Sorry, your voice is breaking, Asha, I lost you there. For the technologies that sound, and yeah, how much does it require for us? Like how long should we just stay there and continue? How long should you be there and do the sound thing? Is that what you're saying? To work out faster, like for example, Rohit and Maggie was telling about their technology thing. So, like that, I'm trying to ask like, how much does it require to like, do we have to give the whole like, we have to stay there for a long time, just do it or like, you can just start it and just leave it for a minute. Right, so I think, yeah, Rohit, I think basic setting, like once, I think initially it'll take some time, yeah. Let's say, I'm just talking about like an hour before, so with something like that, to just set things up. But once the balance is there, there's not too much of very tedious tweaking after that. So yeah. Yes, Christopher. Yeah, there are actually two questions. One is one question, which Sister Upa had mentioned with regards to powered outages. So I just wanted to understand this sound equipment. Does it get supported by UPS or do you need a generator, backup generator set to be connected in case powered goes off? And as you know, in Bangalore, it happens quite often. So that was the first question. And the second question is really about, I think more of a question for Rohit is, what is that sort of one piece of equipment that you haven't yet got and which you think will make a major, a huge difference in the sound quality? And something that you really want to, that you really think that APC could do, goodbye. Okay, so with the power concern, so you can do UPS or generator, but before you do that, it's important to figure out how much the power consumption is. So all your, whatever electrical equipment you have, just Google it, there'll be a manual that says, this is how much power it consumes. So get a ballpark of how much overall power you need and based on that, you can get a inverter as well. So two of our locations. Actually our on-campus Bible college has an inverter. So we've taken into account how much the power requirement is just for the small speaker system they use there. Similarly, in the APC East location also, we have an inverter set up over there. Like you said, frequent power cuts, but now they don't even know the difference. They don't even know when they've lost power. So it's become very seamless there. Yeah, so you can go either way, whichever suits you best. I think an inverter is more budget friendly. A generator would be more of an ongoing thing. So yeah. Piece of equipment. We hire generators for events, isn't it, Roy? Isn't it? Correct, yeah. You hire on like an hourly basis, yeah. So but on the long run, it's never a permanent asset. So if you're not consuming too much power, I think an inverter makes more sense, yeah. They follow a smaller says congregation and inverters better. Yeah, yeah. In terms of equipment that would help APC, I think that curve is, I think we've already, we went through a process actually during lockdown, where quite a lot of things happened. So we're actually on par with industry standard at the moment. We're very grateful for that, yeah. So we had quite a bit of things happening. We initially went to streaming, then we invested in some equipment to better the streaming system. Then we went to cameras, we went to lights. Basically everything you learn today, we did in stages over the two years, yeah. So I mean, I think a good reference would be, just go on YouTube and type APC church service 2020 or something like that. And then watch today's, I mean the service that happened last week. You'll tell, you'll be able to tell, it's very evident the change, yeah. At the moment, I don't think there's anything in the bucket list that's like necessary, necessary. Yeah, I think we're in a good place. Okay, thanks. Need a bigger channel, more channel mixer. But yeah, see, it's amazing, what he mentioned about, we got certain things at different stages. We didn't get all of it at one shot. And also another important word that Rohit used was grateful. We're extremely grateful to be part of a church where the leaders understand the importance of a good sound and investing in equipments that not for the sake of investing, but then understands everything that goes into it. So we are very grateful to have a leadership that understands that. So we are not taking that for granted. I'm certainly not taking that for granted, yeah. Any other questions? Guess, Maggie, do you have a question or Avni or the non tech? I want questions from non tech people as well. Cause this will help you in your ministry in the long run. So just feel free to ask questions. Okay, it doesn't matter. Sir, can I ask? Yes, Ashik. Yeah, yeah. Sir, I just want to know that is there any difference between the normal speakers and the monitor? Or is it just the configuration is different or I just want to know that. Thank you, sir. It's just the purpose actually. So as a speaker, so you can use the same speaker on a tripod stand, yeah, for the congregation, but it's more about the application. So the ones pointed towards the congregation are for them to listen. The one facing the people on the stage, musicians who are or the preacher, it's for them to hear themselves. So I think functionally, there's nothing different with the speaker. I think one thing you'll notice with the speaker is, and if you notice the image, it's cut at an angle. So the shape of the box is cut at an angle. So the point of that is so that it's on the ground, it's not pointing up. It's tilted towards you. It's facing you from the ground up. So I think that's one difference. Yeah, I think we're just going back to the PBT. There you go. Yeah. So it can sit on the ground like this. It's flat, right? So basically it's just the design difference, but application is pretty much the same shape of the box. Yeah, if someone says it's a monitor, like let's say a description on Amazon says monitor speaker, it probably has this shape. But at the same time, it will have the hole for a pole mount. You can put it on a tripod. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Well, okay, then I think we don't have all right. There's a question here from Aasha. Hearing about technology, it is really interesting. I'd love to learn and be involved someday. Yeah, Rohit, there's a volunteer for you who's very interested. So take Aasha as an intern. Yeah, it is very interesting. If you come to APC, APC Central, if you're a student here, this Sunday, I'll be at APC Central, right? I'd love for you to come in a little early and I'll just take you behind the scenes of everything that happens that goes on. So you are most welcome to come and I'll take you on a tour, on a personal tour of everything that happens behind the scenes, okay? But you'll have to come in early, so all right. Great, if there's nothing else, well, if there's anything that you can take away from this today's class is sound and technology are extremely crucial for you to have an effective ministry. You know, and then I hope this has helped you in some way in the long run, right? And Rohit, thank you so much for taking time off, although you have. It's down with the cold. But thank you, thank you so much for just being part of this session. I appreciate your time. I'll see you in office later. Good, guys. Thank you all for joining in. God bless you all. Have a lovely rest of the day. Bye-bye. Bye, guys. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you, Rohit. Thank you. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you, Rohit. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you, Rohit. Yeah, awesome. Bye-bye.