The 700-capacity worship sanctuary at Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church in La Place, LA was recently outfitted with Danley Sound Labs SBH10 column loudspeakers joined by additional components from the company in a system upgrade headed by Assurance AV Solutions (Mandeville, LA).
“The original sound reinforcement design was terrible, and they had it replaced within two months by a different contractor,” explains Matt Dupuy, installation technician with Assurance AV. Dupuy, who also was a member of the church member as a child, continues, “The new system was better, but not at all great. They limped along with it for nearly two decades. There were always complaints, but it remained a backburner issue.”
Specifically, the system consists of two Danley SBH10s in the locations of the previous sound system’s main loudspeakers (no change to aesthetics.). A single Danley THmini subwoofer rounds out the low end, and three Danley Nano loudspeakers provide down fill coverage. A single 2RU, 8-channel Danley DNA 10k8 Pro amplifier drives all loudspeakers as well as the church’s existing distributed system in hallways and bathrooms. The DNA 10k8 Pro’s onboard DSP allowed Dupuy to fine-tune system performance parameters, while a a new Behringer X32 Rack provides the church with iPad mixing capabilities, and new Sennheiser wireless systems bring the inputs up to date.
“The church was frustrated,” adds Assurance AV president Chuck Breaux, speaking of the previous system. “They had been dealing with complaints from the start, but now the system itself was getting old. Ascension of Our Lord’s sanctuary is pretty standard for a Catholic church – lots of hard surfaces and a high ceiling and, thus, lots of reverberation. The church’s sound tech is knowledgeable and, between him and Dupuy, they had done the very best they could with the old system. We designed a Danley point-source system using Danley Direct modeling software and presented it to the church with a quote.
“Another benefit of Danley systems is that they go in quickly,” Breaux concludes, “It took Matt and an assistant just three days to remove the old system and install the new Danley one. They’re elated with the performance, and, perhaps the best measure of satisfaction, we haven’t had to field any tech support phone calls from Ascension of Our Lord. Once the system went in, they never mentioned acoustical treatment again!”
