A new sound reinforcement system in the sanctuary at Reimage Church in Winterville, NC to support contemporary worship services incorporates recently introduced Constant Curvature Array (CCA) loudspeakers from Blaze Audio.
Hi Tech Electronics, of Greenville, NC, a design/build AV integration firm with a primary focus on the house of worship and education markets, was contracted to design and deploy the new system. “The sanctuary at Reimage Church is a large, semicircular space with seating accommodations for 1,200 people,” explains David Williams, president of Hi Tech Electronics. “The edge of the stage faces directly into the arch of the room, which measures approximately 75 feet from the stage edge to the rear wall.
“This design can easily create considerable challenges for having consistent sounding audio throughout the entire space, particularly on the extreme left and right sides. This is precisely why loudspeakers with wide horizontal dispersion in addition to well-focused vertical throw were so important, and this was a key factor that led us to deploy the Blaze Audio CCA Series.”
Mounted horizontally with tight acoustic centers in a design to help minimize comb filtering, each CCA10i enclosure provides a stated fixed 20-degree vertical coverage pattern and can be flown with additional enclosures in vertical arrays. The system’s constant curvature waveguide provides a 160-degree symmetrical horizontal pattern.
“The installation includes three hangs—each with three Blaze Audio CCA10i-BA-B enclosures,” Williams reports. “The center cluster faces straight out toward the rear center of the room while the left and right arrays face into the mid area of the left and right sides. All three clusters are positioned directly over the front edge of the stage area. DSP is handled by two Symetrix Prism units, the 8 X 8 and 16 X 16 models. Power amplification is provided by six Blaze Audio PowerZone Connect 3004 DSP-enabled Class-D power amplifiers. There are two amps per hang point, mounted with a custom bracket that holds the amps on the back of the loudspeaker enclosures.”
“I should also point out that we retained eight WorxAudio UW18BP subwoofers that we installed with the original system back in the 90s,” Williams adds. “Like the new Blaze Audio loudspeakers, the WorxAudio sub bass enclosures were also designed by Hugh Sarvis, and this was a key factor that enabled us to retain the subwoofers and mate them with the new CCA enclosures. They all originated with the same loudspeaker engineer. It’s also my understanding that the WorxAudio designs are now the intellectual property of Blaze Audio.
“The clarity and pattern control on the CCA loudspeakers is nothing short of amazing,” he concludes. “It doesn’t sound like you’re listening to a box — the sound seems to be everywhere. Speech intelligibility is excellent and music reproduction is as clear and present as I’ve ever heard. Everything sounds so completely natural. Equally noteworthy is the fact that with the Blaze Audio CCA Series, it took roughly half the loudspeakers of the previous installation to deliver superior results. I should also add that the video and stage techs are very happy because this new system doesn’t complicate lines of sight.”
