A new sound reinforcement system at the 3,000-capacity worship sanctuary at the Tarheel Club Road campus of Wake Chapel Church in Raleigh, NC incorporates recently introduced Constant Curvature Array (CCA) series loudspeakers from Blaze Audio.
The new system was designed and installed by integration firm Hi Tech Electronics (based in Greenville, NC, with company president David Williams overseeing the sales, engineering, and installation on the project. “The sanctuary at Wake Chapel is a large space that measures 187 feet wide with a room depth of 137 feet from the front of the stage to the rear wall. To properly address a congregation of roughly 3,000 people in a space this wide and deep, we needed loudspeakers capable of delivering wide horizontal dispersion in addition to significant throw,” he says.
“Equally important, we wanted to maintain a clear line of sight to the stage area from the entire seating area,” Williams continues. “We were initially expecting to fly as many as 36 line array enclosures deployed in three hangs of 12 — left / center / right — across the front of the stage area, but this would have impaired visibility, so we sought another solution. We found it with the CCA10i Constant Curvature Array series loudspeakers from Blaze Audio.”
The CCA10i is a three-way arrayable point source model designed for medium-sized venues and larger distributed systems. Mounted horizontally with tight acoustic centers to help minimize comb filtering, each CCA10i enclosure provides a fixed 20-degree vertical coverage pattern and can be flown with additional enclosures in vertical arrays. The system’s constant curvature waveguide provides 160-degree symmetrical horizontal pattern control.
Williams and the installation crew deployed a setup at the front edge of the stage area that consists of three hangs (left/center/right), each comprised of four CCA10i enclosures. Coverage to the rear areas is enhanced with three flown clusters of three CCA10i loudspeakers 90 feet from the front edge of the stage.
“The difference between using the Blaze Audio CCA10i loudspeakers as opposed to more traditional line array enclosures is huge,” Williams states. “By eliminating these large loudspeaker clusters across the front of the stage area, people can see the activity on stage better—and this goes a long way toward keeping the congregation engaged. Just like the exceptionally wide and tightly controlled horizontal coverage, the CCA10i enclosures are equally impressive in terms of vertical dispersion. According to Hugh Sarvis, Blaze Audio’s lead loudspeaker design engineer, ‘By fixing the vertical coverage at 20 degrees per unit, the need for splay angle calculation is eliminated, optimizing system configuration, shortening project deployment time, and improving the installation experience.’ This is exactly what we experienced with the Blaze Audio CCA10i loudspeakers.”
To help the church contain costs on the project, Williams elected to re-use the existing WorxAudio TL 218SSi-P subwoofers for low-frequency support. Two of the subs are flown five feet behind the left and right loudspeaker clusters over the front stage while the remaining two enclosures are on the floor to the left and right sides of the stage.
All loudspeakers are driven by Blaze Audio PowerZone Connect 3004 Class-D amplifiers. For system control, Williams contracted with Selah Media Productions (selahmedia.net) of Mount Holly, NC, which supplied a Symetrix Prism 16 x 16 processor for the main arrays and a Symetrix Prism 8 x 8 for the delays. Using Symetrix Composer software, a custom DSP platform was programmed into the units, supplying all the matrix, gain, EQ, and delay needed to tune the system. Sarvis and Selah Media Productions president Buck Roberts were both onsite to tune and commission the system.
Steven Petersen, lead audio engineer at Wake Chapel, concludes, “Everyone — both church personnel and congregation members — has been very impressed with the new Blaze Audio setup. The system’s speech intelligibility is better than it’s ever been, and this is crucial, as it enables people to gain the most out of what’s being said. Likewise, music reproduction is terrific. Music sounds more natural and has more presence than we’ve ever had. Equally important, the system doesn’t visually distract from what’s taking place on stage, and that enables everyone to be more engaged. David and his crew did an excellent job, and we couldn’t be happier.”
