AUMC AV Blog

OK, yes, Friday I spent eleven hours cleaning the sound booth. What can I say? Not only am I a neat freak, but it needed it! We started installing equipment last summer and we have had 6 Sunday services in there (not counting Holy Week services), and the room has never been cleaned more than vacuuming and emptying the trash. So while you can argue that the 11 hours is a bit much, you can't argue that it needed it. Plus, I like to do a deep clean about once a year, just to shake out all the cobwebs.

WARNING: For most people, this post will be long and boring. It has no real information in it, it is just me talking about what I did for 11 hours, and it has a lot of purdy pictures. I am posting it here because I apparently have too much time on my hands, and because I enjoy reading about similar things that others do, so I assume that others will enjoy reading this. So read on, if you are so inclined. Oh, and of course clicking a photo will get you a larger version.

The "Great Cleaning of 2009" actually started on Thursday, before the Kingdom Kids (AKA: preschool) graduation. I zip-tied the wires going to the camera together so that they look all purdy. I have no before picture, but:

After: Camera

This looks great, and it will work wonders when you are running the camera, the problem will come in when I want to take the camera somewhere and I need a power source... I just need to buy a separate power source for occasions such as those.

Moving on to the computer. I wanted to move all of the wires that run to the computer from one hole in the counter to another (from the hole by the video rack to the hole behind the sound board, look in the second photo below, you will see the grommet that I wanted to run them through), but alas, several cords weren’t long enough, so I wasn’t able to. Here all I really did was wrap the cables.

Before: Computer

After: Computer

As I said, I did the above Thursday evening. Friday afternoon I showed up just after 2 PM (I had to wait for Sonic’s Happy Hour) and I got to work on the main rack.

Before: Main Rack

Before: Main Rack

I spent time dusting off the rack and vacuuming under it. I also brought some of those pads that you put under furniture that makes it easier to move and put them under the rack, so it is now easier to slide on the carpet [we have to slide out the rack if we want to open the back door]. I took out the PC and used a can of air on it (it needed it!). I also put a left over pice of black poster board in the bottom of the rack so that now the PC sits on that and not the carpet... makes sliding around easier. After strapping a few wires down, it was done.

During: Main Rack (minus the PC)

After: Main Rack

After: Main Rack

Next came the back of the video rack.

Before: Video Rack

This was just a matter of grouping cables together and zip tying them together. Also, there are some extra cables for the switcher, IE: a VGA cable in case we ever need to hook up a laptop. These cables are Velcro-tied together for easy access.

During: Video Rack

During: Video Rack

After: Video Rack (minus the back cover)

At that point I moved to the other side of the sound booth and did the audio rack.

Before: Audio Rack (with the cover)


Lather, rinse, repeat. The one thing I did extra here was I moved all of the wires out of one hole and through another hole in the counter (note the hole in the above photo is in the corner, and the hole in the photos below is by the window). This allows the rack to be closer to the sound board, letting the sound guy have easier access to it. I was also able to remove three cables from this area (note two of them in the photo above) because when we installed the audio distribution amp we ran several replacement wires and the old ones weren’t needed any more.

After: Audio Rack (sans cover)

After: Audio Rack (with cover)

Now you are starting to see how much of a neat freak I am. With each of the racks, I wasn’t just cleaning, I was doing a deep clean and re-orginization. IE: I am organizing wires, dusting everything off, cleaning the counter, and using my can of air like Bruce Willis uses guns in a Die Hard flick. In fact, I am such a neat freak that I had to reorganize the wires in the back of our audio board:

Before: Audio Board

Did this need to be done? No. But it makes me feel better.

After: Audio Board

So at this point I had done pretty much everything above the counter, which left below the counter. And below the counter needed a lot of work! I worked each section (between each support for the counter) one at a time, down the row.

Of note: I had a great (well I think it was great) idea to help with cable management: I bought several dowel rods, zip tied them together, and they made one long cable support underneath the entire counter. So all down the line I zip tied cables to this support, and it helped achieve a great clean look. You can see the dowels in the photos below.

After: Segment 2

Before: Segment 3 (under the sound board)

After: Segment 3

Before: Segment 4 (under the computer)

After: Segment 4 (note the floating hard drive)

Before: Segment 5


After: Segment 5

Not to be constrained to the sound booth, I also did some work on the choir mics:

After: Choir Mics

The hard work was done, but I still had plenty left to do:

During: Sound Booth


After a thorough vacuum and final dusting, everything was done!

Finished: Sound Booth

Finished: Sound Booth

Finished: Computer

Finished: Video Rack

Finished: Behind the Video Rack

Finished: Sound Booth

Finished: Back of the Audio Rack

Everything tidied up for the night
(with the iMac running AppleJack)

I even had a visitor on my way out the building:

My visitor


And THAT is how you spend 11+ hours cleaning a sound booth. I still need to do some work to the back of the TV in the foyer, but I need someone else to help me take it down and put it back up. Maybe next week...

Matthew