Church Sound Article Fri, December 05, 2008

Church Sound | Feature |

Live Sound House of Worship Showcase - Hope Community Church

By Mark Frink

Summary

  • Part 10 of an 11 part series from the Live Sound International Showcase of Churches
    In the beginning there was the Word. As the congregation grew, sound reinforcement was needed to hear clearly at the back of the sanctuary. Few sound systems have as many challenges as those installed in modern houses of worship. Contemporary worship services have incorporated rock bands and have ambitions that rival corporate and theatrical productions. The service is often a cross between a high school musical and a Broadway show – all on a mission from God. Expectations are high, yet the band, singers and crew are volunteers, while most buildings have inherent architectural and acoustic challenges. The technical department is consumed by training operators and a budget that gets eaten up by moving lights, video and broadcast equipment. Yet all agree that the single most important improvement is a top-shelf sound system.

    Many churches upgrade their technical systems – video, lighting, and sound – in phases, addressing one department or core function at a time as finances allow. With a plethora of high-quality sound equipment to choose from, the time has come to look at recent upgrades in modern houses of worship.

The Raleigh, North Carolina Hope Community Church celebrated the opening of a new 90,000 square-foot campus, including a new 1,500-seat theater-style worship sanctuary. Its concert-caliber sound system was developed under the guidance of Bob Blair, principal of Raleigh-based APS Integrated Systems.

The sanctuary has the common fan-shaped seating that maximizes proximity and creates intimacy. As a result, the room is 130 feet wide, but only 80 feet deep, with most seats on the floor, backed by steep stadium-style seating beneath a balcony on the rear wall. QSC WideLine line array loudspeakers, providing a coverage pattern of 140 degrees horizontally, were a natural choice. Three WideLine arrays, in traditional left-center-right (LCR) configuration, provide coverage to the back of the main level. From the beginning, the design called for plenty of low end, and so five QSC dual-15 Modular Design MD-S215 subwoofers are housed in cavities below the front of the platform. The first couple of seating rows are addressed with four QSC Acoustic Design AD-S82 compact loudspeakers along the lip of the platform. To cover to the balcony, which is shadowed by a catwalk that impedes coverage from the main arrays, three QSC 102M compact full-range loudspeakers are delayed and fed programming that mirrors the main LCR arrays.

All loudspeakers are driven by QSC PowerLight2 amps – eight PL 230 and eight PL 224 – located in two racks housed on the mezzanine level, where two QSC BASIS 904zz DSP units provide all system processing. The system’s Yamaha DM2000 digital console has a CobraNet card that sends digital audio to the BASIS processors on a single Belden CAT-5 cable. The DM2000 is also equipped with a two Aviom cards which feed stage monitor sends via CAT-5 for up to 16 independent IEM mixes. Up to 16 channels of AKG WMS 4000 Series UHF wireless microphone
systems are employed.