Change In Plans
Everything was moving right along, with the aging house system to be replaced with two larger KIVA/KILO arrays, until the economy began to worsen, which impacted fund raising, and the project cameto a halt.
Finally, many months later, with only a portion of the funds raised, Gary Matthews, Director of the Church Fine Arts program, and Technical Director Dave Scholten, called a meeting with Parkway to explore what options might be available.
Parkway Systems Engineer Jeff VandeHoef offered a somewhat unconventional alternative that better suited the church’s actual budget – a flown system of four L-Acoustics 115XT HiQ coaxial enclosures.
These loudspeakers, which are more traditionally utilized as stage wedges or fill loudspeakers, might be able to meet coverage needs if deployed in an “exploded cluster” above the audience area. Specifically, three of these loudspeakers would bolster house coverage, and the fourth serving as a fill loudspeaker (much like it would have been utilized in the original design).
VandeHoef utilized the L-Acoustics SoundVision acoustic simulation program in mapping out the approach. One of the significant considerations was ensuring that the new loudspeakers would not interfere with the projection path of the existing video system.
The simulation program showed this not to be the case, but it would be a very close call, and all of this came as the church was looking at an upcoming presentation of Haydn’s Creation that would involve the video system.
Because of the potential issue, Parkway moved up the installation date up by two weeks.
“The simulation program showed we would be clear by a few inches, but I choose to push up the priority on this part of the project in order to give us time to make any changes that might become necessary,” VandeHoef explains. “As it turned out, the loudspeaker flypoints were indeed clear of the projection path, just as SoundVision showed.”
Two SB118 subwoofers were also installed during this phase, as were L-Acoustics LA4 amplified controllers for power and processing of all of the loudspeakers. The long-term thinking is that that when funds are available, the 115XT HQs can be re-purposed as stage monitors, replaced by original design’s line arrays.