Richwoods Christian Church in Peoria, IL, which offers four services at its main and satellite locations every weekend, has recently upgraded the sound reinforcement capabilities at both facilities with Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers.
The primary sanctuary is housed in a former high-end furniture store, where, despite low ceiling height, local A/V integration firm Advanced Audio and Lighting attained highly intelligible and musical audio production via deployment of Danley SH-50 full-range loudspeakers and TH-115 subwoofers.
And at the satellite sanctuary, which meets at an Embassy Suites hotel ballroom, a more portable system headed by self-powered Danley SH-96 loudspeakers and TH-118 subwoofers has been implemented.
“Everyone we worked with at Richwoods had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve without getting overly involved in the nuts and bolts of how it would be achieved,” says Trent Keeling, vice president at Advanced Audio and Lighting. “Quality audio was high on their priority list. They wanted a system that would deliver their very contemporary praise and worship style with authority. Because there’s a lot of musical talent in the church, they needed something that would serve everything from orchestral music to a 5-piece rock band, on top of having excellent intelligibility.”
While the former furniture store works well in terms of location and accessibility, it’s not ideal for sound reinforcement. There’s only a 19-foot distance between the floor and the low steel, which was compressed even further by a modest stage and drop ceiling.
“That’s not a standard hang height,” Keeling notes with a laugh. “One of Richwoods’ signature programs is its Christmas pageant, which involves, at various points, up to 30 children running around stage with open omnidirectional lavalier mics. If we could place the PA 25 feet up and 25 feet forward, then just about any loudspeaker could pull that off. But here we were going to be right above the stage, 16 feet up. That’s where you separate the men from the boys.”
Keeling’s solution was to cover the room with four SH-50 full-range loudspeakers, two close-packed on each side of the stage.
“Danley’s Synergy Horn loudspeakers, like the flagship SH-50, have excellent phase coherency and precise pattern control down to 350 Hz and lower,” he says. “Because of that pattern control, the SH-50s can be right above the stage without collapsing into feedback. In addition, the fact that the SH-50 is a 3-way enclosure gives Richwoods great vocal intelligibility.”
Two flown Danley TH-115 subwoofers provide low-end support. The system is nominally stereo, but because the 600-plus-seat room is so wide, the techs are “discouraged from doing any hard panning,” in Keeling’s words. Biamp Audia provides processing, Lab.gruppen amplifiers power the system, the front of house console is a Yamaha M7, with Shure microphones for vocals.
The success of this system motivated the approach at the satellite location, Richwoods East. “They recognized that the quality of their services was an important component of Richwoods’ success,” says Keeling. “They wanted the satellite to live up to the quality of the ‘Mother Ship’.”
