For its pioneering role in popularizing the satellite campus approach, The Church Report proclaimed Seacoast Church the 15th most influential church in America. Over 8,000 attend Seacoast services every weekend across thirteen campuses in three states.
The church’s original campus is located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and that is still from where founding Pastor Greg Surratt delivers his message every weekend, in the flesh. Seacoast recently called upon Summit Integrated Systems to design a new sound system to replace an old system that had degraded to an insufferable state.
Summit Integrated Systems president and CEO Chris Rayburn designed a beautiful, cross-matrixed LCR system composed of Danley Sound Labs full-range loudspeakers and beefy subwoofers.
The original sound system had been installed in the early 1990s, but the church’s increasingly contemporary services left more and more to be desired. Most notably, the sound was obviously lacking in low end. Worse, more components failed with every passing year, damaging intelligibility and coverage.
“The acoustics, noise control, and vibration control were all still in great shape so all we had to focus on was the console forward,” explained Rayburn. “LifeChurch.tv – one of our other multi-campus mega-church designs – referred us to Seacoast.”
Another A/V design firm had suggested that Seacoast replace its old system with a line array, and the church contacted Summit Integrated Systems for a second opinion. “The first thing to understand is that Seacoast’s Mount Pleasant site seats 1,000 people in a room that is 50-feet deep by 150-feet wide,” said Rayburn.
“While a line array can work well in the right application, it offers very little horizontal control – the very thing that is needed in a wide room. Instead, we recommended a LCR system with a delay ring for the balcony.”
“Further, we recommended a Danley system as their boxes do such a good job of providing consistent, even coverage across their beam width. They sound fantastic, and, invariably, we’ve got big smiles when we first crank up a Danley install – and the clients have even bigger smiles.”
The Danley-centered system provides the horizontal control required. Rayburn cross-matrixed the central three clusters to deliver clear spoken word and vocals on the center channel and vibrant, dynamic instrumentation on the left and right channels to any seat in the house.
Three clusters cover most of the seating, but the stage’s long thrust forces the central cluster forward so that the entire coverage area spans 200-degrees. The central cluster contains four Danley SH-50 full-range loudspeakers, that all deliver center channel information with the outer boxes delivering cross-matrixed left or right signal.
The side clusters each contain three Danley SH-50s, but only two of them per side contain left- or right-channel information. The remaining SH-50s are cross-matrixed so that every seat receives clear center-channel information along with an appropriate balance of left-right information. Ten distributed Danley SH-95 cover the balcony in a delay ring.
Four Danley TH-118 subwoofers deliver an abundance of tight, undistorted bass from their position underneath the stage. Six Lab.gruppen C48:4 amps power all the full-range boxes, whereas two Lab.gruppen SP7000 amps power the Danley subwoofers.
A Biamp Audia DSP with an additional Biamp EXPO breakout box provides all system processing, and a Yamaha M7CL digital console gives the church’s audio department abundant, intuitive, and recallable command of their sometimes complex stage setups.
Rayburn was impressed that Seacoast’s technical department shouldered the responsibility of installing the system themselves. “They did a fantastic job,” he said. “All of the wiring is clean and fully up to professional standards.”
“Not only did they do a great job, they did it quickly. In the span of a workweek, they managed to rip out the old system and install the new system so that services weren’t interrupted. Of course, everyone is thrilled with the sound of the new system. It really coheres with the very contemporary services at Seacoast.”
