The worship sanctuary on the Hampton, PA campus of Allison Park Church has been equipped with a new spatial sound reinforcement design headed by d&b Soundscape working with the company’s 24S and 44S dedicated installation loudspeakers from the company’s xS-Series.
“We initially visited the d&b demo room in Asheville, NC to eliminate Soundscape as an option and when we left, we all realized it was the only option,” explains Brandon Cecil, founder and vice president of Fresh Tech Integrated, the integration firm on the project. “The definition and consistency the Soundscape system delivers is unparalleled by anything else we’ve experienced.”
The 750-seat sanctuary has proven a challenging room to cover with traditional PA designs, with Cecil noting, “The room is extremely wide and fairly short; we modeled a couple of different options and all of them had a reduced experience toward the outside and back of the room. The goal from the beginning of the project was to deliver an excellent and consistent experience to every seat and person who attends Allison Park Church. Until we experienced the Soundscape system, we were struggling to find a sound system that could and would deliver the level of consistency that we required. Soundscape delivered so much consistency and fidelity that the average sound pressure level dropped by 10 dB in the first week!”
He also cites the church’s vision and the leadership of experience director Brendon Robinson, as keys to the effort: “Brendon’s commitment to excellence and a collaborative workflow help to deliver a powerful worship and message experience unmatched in the area. We had the fortune of hearing the d&b 24S and 44S point source loudspeakers in the room before a final design was chosen. The power of the 24S is astonishing and delivered a full range, highly intelligible system in a compact enclosure. The 44S are the MVP of the front fill world. They are highly directional, extremely clear and have enough output to keep up with the late-night youth raves.
“The challenging part of the implementation of this room is how close the room seating is to the front of the stage,” he continues. “It’s a very shallow stage with seats within 20 feet of unshielded drums, which had presented problems with the previous PA. The church had invested in quality drums, cymbals, tuning and microphones, however, none of this truly shined or was heard with the previous system. Soundscape was able to properly cover every seat providing the front and the back row to receive a consistent experience that lets the quality sources shine.”
The Allison Park Church Hampton campus delivers in-person contemporary worship services three times each weekend, including one on Saturday and two on Sunday. The band typically consists of four vocalists, full drum kit (un-caged), bass, one or two electric guitars, keyboard, and tracks.
“Our goal is to achieve a balance of an authentic experience that does not feel over produced and maintains a high level of excellence that engages people of all ages and backgrounds,” states Robinson. “Our team will commonly talk about production elements feeling invisible (organic or natural) and this is what Soundscape delivers. Soundscape allows us to immerse our audience and direct their attention in a way that lighting has done for hundreds of years, but audio has never been able to quite accomplish until now. Other immersive or distributed audio systems attempt to do this and up until now has felt artificial and has directed the attention to a loudspeaker instead of the person with the microphone. Soundscape provided an alternative that doesn’t make you think about the speakers but creates an environment that draws you in. The true secret sauce of Soundscape really goes past the immersive features though, it’s the fidelity, coverage, and audience engagement it delivers.”
The system configuration includes three 5D and three 40D amplifiers, a DS10 network bridge, a DS100 signal engine with En-Scene software module, seven 24S-D loudspeakers for mains, six 44S loudspeakers for frontfills, four 10S-D extensions, and a subwoofer array consisting of five 21S SUBs
“On many levels, this is an enormous win for the church since the room has not been conducive to high-end audio systems performing well until Soundscape came along. Until Soundscape entered the conversation, no one designed a solution for these types of spaces,” Robinson concludes. “The room’s trim height has always been a downfall for even coverage with traditional PA solutions, no matter how much money or time we were willing to throw at the problem because you can’t change the laws of physics. We jokingly say Soundscape fixed physics because that’s honestly how we feel about it. It has provided such outstanding coverage with no dead spots or phase cancellation in a way that our entire team thought was impossible. I think Soundscape has finally delivered a solution that allows smaller or oddly shaped venues an ability to deliver high quality and consistent listening experiences.”
