ROSWELL, GA — While in the process of shifting from a more traditional style to a more blended style of worship, the people of Northbrook United Methodist Church began to notice that their audio system wasn't capable of handling the change, so the church enlisted the help of Ronnie Stanford, systems advisor for dB Audio and Video, Gainesville, Ga., a company that provides installations for schools, government agencies and businesses, in addition to churches. Northbrook seats 700 in a large, rectangular room with 60-foot ceilings. The front of the balcony is 70 feet from the front wall, and the balcony itself is another 50 feet deep. The seating is arrayed in a semicircle focused on the stage. "From an audio perspective, you have to keep your speakers in front of the pulpit, and yet you need to cover a lot of seats that are actually behind the pulpit," explained Stanford. "In addition, part of the seating is underneath 'wings' that are 12 feet from either side of the pulpit. Under the wings, the ceilings are a mere eight feet. So your main speakers are hanging off of 60-foot ceilings, and yet you still have to reach underneath these wings."
Stanford brought a pair of Danley Sound Labs SH-50 speakers and a single Danley TH-115 subwoofer for a demo. "We weren't trying to pin anyone against the back wall with bass," he joked, "but we did want a nice, rich low-end response. We flew the three SH-50 speakers above the pulpit with an additional SH-100 as downfill. Now the church heard the sound they wanted to hear."
With the help of their dB Audio and Video engineer, Ivan Beaver, Stanford tackled the wings with a pair of Atlas SM82 wall-mount speakers. "We placed the Atlases at the crown of the wall and ran them on delays," he explained. "We had to be careful not to create problems in the main seating area. By making sure they were properly timed and then we kept the volume low."
Stanford rounded out Northbrook's audio makeover with acoustic treatment against the long, flat back wall. Noted Stanford, "I just knew with the long throw from that height that we were going to energize that back wall in a way that the older sound system was incapable of doing. So, without adding some acoustical treatment, the reflections would have been harsh." Outside of the back wall, however, no other acoustical treatments were necessary.
Additional improvements were simple. dB Audio and Video added a 16-channel Yamaha AW16G digital recorder so that they could preserve and reproduce performances by their musicians.
dB Audio and Video completed the project in October 2006.
For more information, visit www.danleysoundlabs.com.
