The Worship Center at First Baptist Church Woodstock (FBCW) in Georgia, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, recently became the site of the world’s largest permanent installation of L-Acoustics L-ISA immersive sound technology.
Integration firm Diversified was brought into the project nearly two years ago to provide the church with an AVL upgrade for its in-person experience. “First Baptist Woodstock has two service options to participate in, and while they have different musical elements and characteristics, they share a common need for sonic clarity, consistent tone, and massive headroom yet intimate sound. We were asked to help them reimagine a venue that would feel equally intentional for both of those very different services,” says Tim Corder, Diversified director of strategic accounts, Worship and Performance Environments. “After spending several days with the church’s creative team in an intense ideation session, we imagined a system anchored on the in-room experience that would have the ability to transition very quickly within a 15-minute turnaround from one service to the next.”
From the onset, the Diversified team believed that L-ISA was the right ft for the project. “They needed a system that would be able to give dimension to what they were doing in each service, as well as make their massive room feel small, intimate, and engaging,” explains Diversified account executive and audio lead Nick Geiger. “We knew that L-ISA would do both, and also allow them to essentially flip a switch to move between their two performance setups.”
FBCW production director Josh Belokonny points out that they initially turned to Diversified because the Worship Center’s original mono center cluster loudspeaker system was failing to meet their needs. “We had volume and tone inconsistencies throughout the room that made it hard to establish a consistent experience for everyone,” he says. But he also suggests that a new left/right line array system might not have been the right choice for a replacement. “There’s a lot of architecture that is very specific to the space here, and we had to take that into account. Standard left and right arrays in this room were an obstacle from a video standpoint because they would cause a lot of sightline issues.”
The new approach came in the form of the new A Series loudspeaker line from L-Acoustics. “A Series, and specifically the A15i, was chosen for several reasons: first and foremost because the technology and sound of the box mimic larger L-Acoustics enclosures like the K1, K2, and K3,” says Josh Maichele, L-Acoustics applications project manager, House of Worship. “Secondly, some of the major advantages to the A Series products are their size and weight. We were able to get the long throw because A15i is a line source, but we were also able to bend the array faster with the A15i Wide, allowing us to reduce the line length and keep the arrays well above LED wall sightlines.”
Using Soundvision, Diversified and L-Acoustics specified a main scene system comprising five arrays of five A15i Focus enclosures over one A15i Wide, backed by four central hangs of two KS28 subwoofers. That system is flanked by two extension arrays of five A10i Focus over one A10i Wide, which is complemented with two out-fill arrays of five A10i Focus over one A10i Wide and two far horizontal out-fill arrays of three A10i Wide.
Below, 14 coaxial 5XT are spread out across the stage stairs for front fill, with two X8 providing extreme left and right front-fill. Additional A10i Wide enclosures are positioned out in the house for over- and under-balcony fill, while above the stage, two hangs of one A15i Wide and one A15i Focus plus two mountings of A15i Wide serve as choir monitors. Three LA12X, 15 LA4X, and four LA2Xi amplified controllers power and process the house and monitor systems, which are all managed via the new L-Acoustics L-ISA Processor II.
Corder states that another advantage of opting for the design was its cost savings: “Once we started running numbers, this L-ISA implementation was actually nearly 25 percent less expensive than a traditional left/right based system because we were able to utilize the cost-effective A15i and A10i loudspeakers. The overall value between performance and investment really couldn’t be touched by any other solution.”
With traditional left/right array-based systems, typically, only 15 percent of the audience seated down the center strip of the room hear things in true stereo. With L-ISA, nearly three-quarters of the congregants are now in the “sweet spot” for experiencing spatialized audio.
“By seat count, this is now the largest venue in the world to have a permanently installed L-Acoustics L-ISA setup,” says Corder. “Diversified completed the very first house of worship project with L-ISA back in 2019, so it’s awesome for us to see the technology and projects continue to grow.”
Belokonny concludes, “When you critically listen to audio somewhere for several years, it’s amazing to walk the room and have it sound completely different overnight. There is great excitement and peace of mind knowing that what we’re able to produce now is a lot more accurate and represents what’s happening onstage. I know that will embolden the worship leaders and band members to play out more, and it’ll create excitement in the choir. I can’t wait to see where we’ll go from here because our new baseline is just leaps and bounds better than the best that our old system ever was. And it’s consistent throughout the whole venue, which provides an opportunity for everyone to be way more unified and to have this sense that we’re all in this moment of worship together.”
