All churches share the common goal of spreading the message. Some have a greater emphasis on spoken word; others rely more on music in any variety of styles, from liturgical to flat-out rock ‘n’ roll. Yet, all houses of worship need a sound system that provides clarity, intelligibility and musicality. With that in mind, we looked at some recent install projects.
Timberlake Church, Redmond, WA
Founded in 1989, a dedication to service and excellence remains at the heart of Timberlake Church, from its mission projects to its online presence and in-person worship experience. This year, the church’s flagship location in Redmond, WA underscored that commitment with Colorado-based HOW integrator Summit Integrated Systems installing an L-Acoustics Kara IIi audio system in its 1,200-seat auditorium.
Summit’s Andrew Starke said the project’s design and installation proved complex. “The challenge for fan-shaped auditoriums like this is getting both consistent impact and coverage,” he explains. “There’s a tendency to trade punch for coverage in such situations, but we didn’t want to do that because the church’s worship style really called for impact.”
The old, previous P.A. system created problems. “The sound in the room tended to be a bit harsh, and coverage was spotty,” explain says Timberlake Church production and technical director Ben Graf, also a longtime pro-AV veteran in the Seattle area, “We were looking for heightened audio and coverage quality, but we were also looking to achieve a new level of impact.”
The new sound system has eight L-Acoustics Kara IIi per side, with four A15i per side for out-fill arrays, providing consistency across the room. “The Kara IIi and A15i compression drivers and voicing are very similar,” says Starke. “We can pick the boxes based on the coverage the room needs, while achieving impact in every location.”
For LF punch, Summit chose six center-hung KS21i subs, flown as adjacent three-enclosure hangs in an omni configuration, with another six ground-based KS21i subs in an arc under the stage. “That gave us the impact we needed, letting us dial in exactly the amount of punch needed for each,” says Starke.
Powering came via three L-Acoustic’s LA7.16i amplified controllers to achieve consistent FIR responses across the main speakers, and a pair of LA12X for the subs. “We were able to get all the power we needed, where we needed it, with fewer amplifiers,” Starke says, “which saved us budget while also increasing our resolution.”
Other system perks included a DiGiCo Quantum225 console with a Waves server rack at FOH and a KLANG:konductor in-ear management system for monitors — all on an Optocore network loop.
“We wanted people worshiping here to feel the services as much as hear them,” says Graf. “In fact, I’d say the sound quality blew us out of the water.”
Timberlake Church
- Capacity: 1,200
- Key Components: L-Acoustics Kara IIi
- Integrator: Summit Integrated Systems
Community Bible Church, San Antonio, TX
Founded in 1990, San Antonio’s Community Bible Church has grown into one of the largest houses of worship in the region. This year, the church installed a KLANG:konductor to offer immersive IEM mixes for the seven vocalists and six musicians, as well as musical guests and worship leaders. The new :konductor was purchased through pro audio retailer AVLX of Franklin, TN, and integrated into the audio infrastructure by the church’s audio team.
“I’ve been running sound at the church for about 14 years now and I’ve come to know the band and have seen how much time and energy they’ve had to spend on getting their in-ear monitoring just right,” says CBC’s director of audio AJ Lebron. “They had stereo mixes, but they were sounding one-dimensional. They needed more space and dimensionality in their monitor mixing. I heard a KLANG:konductor demo at AVLX, and I loved it. It was exactly what we needed.”
Lebron also ordered a DiGiCo DMI-MADI-B card, which is plugged into the :konductor’s rear panel, to interface with the church’s existing Avid S6L-24C monitor desk. That console will remain to provide additional functionality, such as muting and EQ for guest vocalists and pastors, with the KLANG:konductor handling the primary monitor-mixing tasks. The :konductor can interface with MADI, Optocore and Dante (a DiGiCo DMI-DANTE2 “Brooklyn” card is also on order) — and it fits seamlessly into the church’s existing infrastructure and can accommodate future expansions.
For the musicians and vocalists onstage, the KLANG:konductor has been a game-changer. All of them can manage the mixes of their Sennheiser G4 IEMs at an incredibly granular level, dialing in exactly the individual mixes they each want to hear, and using KLANG’s immersive mixing technology. KLANG:konductor was the way to go.”
Community Bible Church
- Capacity: 3,500
- Key Components: KLANG:konductor
- Integrator: AVLX
Jesus Culture, San Diego & Sacramento, CA
House of God Productions is a California-based design and consulting firm focused on houses of worship. For the past three years, they’ve been working with Jesus Culture, a multifaceted Christian organization consisting of a Christian record label, two churches, a school of leadership and a web video and podcast network. “We help produce, record and track their albums,” explains House of God founder Justin Lusignan, adding “we also manage the consulting and installation projects at all of the campuses.”
House of God recently upgraded Jesus Culture’s two campuses to Allen & Heath’s dLive platform, which helped consolidate their system. “We were looking at getting an external server to run plug-ins on their existing consoles,” recalled Lusignan. “But once we factored in all the inserts and plug-ins that dLive has accessible natively, it eliminated the need for any external processing.”
The organization’s dual campuses in San Diego and Sacramento are now running identical systems, with 24-fader dLive C3500 control surfaces at front of house and CDM64 MixRacks for I/O and channel processing. The surfaces are also equipped with Dante cards to split off to the broadcast mix.
For monitor consoles, Lusignan’s team put in a pair of Allen & Heath SQ-7s with DX168 stageboxes for additional outputs. “The band is ecstatic about the improvement,” he said. “Their in-ear mixes have come through so much clearer, and they don’t need to set up drastic EQ curves to compensate anymore. It’s really fun when a client notices an immediate difference.”
Lusignan noted that the Allen & Heath platform’s ease of use has been a major selling point, as his company is focused on house of worship clients. “With churches, it’s often volunteers with limited experience mixing, and they feel at home on those consoles. It’s a huge plus for me.”
Jesus Culture
- Key Components: Allen & Heath dLive Consoles
- Integrator: House of God Productions
Hope Church, Cordova, TN
Founded in 1988, Hope Church is an Evangelical Presbyterian congregation in the Memphis suburb of Cordova. Although the church already had a JBL VTX Series system in its main 5,000-seat sanctuary, the church’s tech staff wondered how a different speaker configuration could benefit the worship experience, while retaining an intimate feel.
Hope’s audio director Tim Kanter reached out to Diversified Systems and with help from HARMAN’s Professional Applications Team, conducted a review to see if they could improve the system with more JBL speakers. Utilizing Ease and Line Array Calculator III (LAC3) software, the team designed and implemented a new configuration with more improved coverage and clarity in the challenging acoustic space.
The solution is based on a traditional left-right configuration of two 10-unit arrays of JBL VTX V20 speakers, with two outfill arrays of ten V20s to increase the horizontal coverage in the large room. Five AE Series speakers were added in delay fill positions to cover the raked rear seating areas and a high-output center fill provided a strong focal point for the front-center seating. Finally, 12 VTX S28 subwoofers in 3-box cardioid groups were horizontally steered for more even lateral coverage.
Hope’s resident audio staff — Kanter and Eric Albers, both with many hours of live and studio engineering experience — were a knowledgeable team, working with JBL Pro’s senior applications staff, who prepared Ease, LAC3 and Performance Manager files to develop the refreshed system concept.
LAC3 allows adding EQ contours to ensure even front-to-rear coverage across multiple audience seating planes and can directly export this data to the GLL loudspeaker file in Ease. After addressing horizontal coverage modifications in Ease, the LAC3 file could be referenced in Performance Manager to address the complete networked audio system.
The subwoofer system was also reviewed and modified via LAC3. Adding delay to the outer sub clusters widened the coverage across the sanctuary width, and the cardioid configuration reduced first-order reflections off the front wall, for a tighter, well-defined LF response.
“There are huge improvements noticed by everyone we’ve talked to,” said Kanter. “These include more clarity, punch, better sound at lower SPL levels and a lot less sound on stage.”
Hope Church
- Capacity: 5,000
- Key Components: JBL VTX line arrays
- Integrator: Diversified Systems
Mar Thoma Church, Farmers Branch, TX
Located in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Mar Thoma Church adapted to virtual online worship services during the pandemic, which exposed the weaknesses of its aging analog sound system. “That experience made us realize that we needed to upgrade to a modern digital system to meet both our virtual and in-person worship needs,” explains church executive committee member Aby Thomas. “We sourced several companies and decided to use Apex General Trading, who visited our facility, listened to our needs and presented a solution that fit our approved budget.”
“Between their need for streaming services and a move toward more contemporary music presentation,” says Apex partner Dipu Harilal, “it was clear they needed to go digital and after consulting with our primary pro audio dealer, Sound Productions, we decided to work with Electro-Voice and Dynacord audio gear.”
Apex developed a proposal based around EASE models developed from blueprints of the 800-capacity facility. The sound system consists of twin EVH-1152D horn-loaded mains, backed by a pair of EVF-2151D subwoofers hidden above and behind the altar area. Additional coverage is handled by two EVC-1082 point-source speakers as 100°x100° fills to cover seating behind the choir area. All loudspeakers are in matching white EVCoat.
Inputs, levels, DSP and other tasks across the Dante-enabled system are handled via the Dynacord MXE5 24×24 Matrix Mix Engine, and the entire system is powered by two Dynacord DSP amplifiers — an IPX10:8 and an IPX5:4.
“Networking the entire system is a very powerful approach,” says Apex co-partner Tinto Skaria. “The system interface is Dynacord’s SONICUE software, used to set up the MXE5, creating custom profiles for each audio zone and optimizing loudspeaker performance. Initially, the system levels and EQ settings are all programmed and locked into the MXE5, with a future goal of creating touchscreen access after the church staff is fully trained.”
“The new EV sound system has made a huge impact on our worship,” says Thomas. “The church choir is ecstatic over the quality of the sound, and several church members have made similar comments. All agree that this project has been a huge success, meeting all our needs within the approved budget. We are extremely happy with the results.”
Mar Thoma Church
- Capacity: 800
- Key Components: Electro-Voice EVH-1152D/96, Dynacord MXE5 Matrix Mix Engine
- Integrator: Apex Trading Company
Mosta Rotunda Church, Mosta, Malta
Built in the 19th century, the Mosta Rotunda in the Maltese town of Mosta boasts a reverberant dome that’s 179 feet tall and 130 feet in diameter, making it the world’s third-largest unsupported dome church.
To create and optimize a new sound system for the historic structure, RCF Audio’s engineering support group collaborated with its local distributor, The Sound System Co Ltd. The installation consisted of eight microphones, an RCF M18 digital mixer, feeding two RCF VSA active steerable columns and infill speakers. The team worked to ensure even and optimized intelligibility across the entire seating area, despite the persistent reverberation caused by the church’s architecture.
To reduce reflections that could negatively impact speech intelligibility, the optimal solution was to install a single line source using the digitally controlled VSA column array. The VSA column is a multi-amplified vertically steerable array, which means that each individual speaker is separately amplified and digitally controlled, so the sound can be vertically tilted without inclining the cabinet. Additionally, it is fully compatible with RDNet, RCF’s proprietary speaker management software.
The installation includes a main RCF VSA 2050 II aimed far-field, wall-mounted above a VSA 1250 II used as a downfill. “We started by acquiring far-field STIPA measurements and optimized VSA 2050 II beaming,” said RCF engineer Francesco Venturi. The team then performed FFT measurements to tune VSA 2050 II frequency response to the church acoustics. After tuning, the system provided rich and accurate voice reproduction with an even intelligibility figure above 0.50 (inside the empty church). The RCF M18 digital mixer allowed optimization for each microphone for gain, gate and EQ settings.
“The improvement in intelligibility with the new RCF steerable array audio system is truly remarkable!” exclaimed The Sound System Co Ltd’s Jon Vella Zarb, adding “the VSA system truly exceeded my expectations!”
Mosta Rotunda Church
- Capacity: 900+
- Key Components: RCF VSA steerable columns, M18 mixer
- Integrator: The Sound System Co, Ltd
St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, PA
Considered one of the best concert venues in the city, the nave of Philadelphia’s 1849 St. Mark’s Church is quite large, with seating for more than 450 people. However, the church’s decorated gothic style, replete with vaulted ceilings, solid wood pews and stone masonry throughout, contributed to an unsatisfactory reverberation time of three seconds.
Church staff reached out to Joe DiSabatino, lead design engineer at JD Sound & Video, to design a new audio system for the sanctuary. DiSabatino partnered with local acoustical engineer Hadi Sumoro of HX Audio Lab to model the acoustics using EASE to design the system and SysTune to tune and optimize. Additionally, JD Sound & Video contacted Renkus-Heinz’ reps at Audio Associates to assist with the installation.
“We have an extensive history working with Renkus-Heinz speakers, and the EASE model showed great performance in the nave,” said DiSabatino. “Their beam steering arrays eliminated the need for delay speakers which would have required mounting to columns, something the church would not approve.”
JD Sound & Video installed Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5 ICL-F-DUAL-RN arrays in the nave to improve speech intelligibility and provide even front-to-back coverage. IC Live Gen5 arrays use advanced digital beam steering technology to deliver high-quality sound while visually blending into the background.
Individual driver control translates to excellent vertical pattern control — essential for delivering intelligible speech in reverberant spaces. Renkus-Heinz’ RHAON II System Manager software lets installers define the opening angles for as many as eight sonic beams from each ICL-F-DUAL-RN array module and aim them up or down.
Six compact CX41s were “tucked away” near the pulpit and choir areas, acting as monitors for liturgical services. The compact four-inch speakers deliver full-range performance in a miniaturized, space-saving design.
The church staff was thrilled with the audio improvements. “We’ll continue using IC Live for challenging acoustic environments like St. Mark’s,” said DiSabatino. “The beam steering is second to none for reverberant spaces.”
St. Mark’s Church
- Capacity: 450+
- Key Components: Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5 ICL-F-DUAL-RN
- Integrator: JD Sound & Video
