Ford Audio-Video Systems has installed EAW QX Series, AX Series and UB Series loudspeakers at the newly constructed J.W. “Jack” MacGorman Chapel on the campus of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) in Fort Worth, TX.
On the project, Ford AV worked closely with Acoustic Dimensions, an Addison, TX-based consulting firm.
The EAW loudspeakers, configured in a central cluster with delays, under-balcony/front fills and choir monitors, provide voice and music reinforcement in the 3,500-seat auditorium. Additional EAW systems are installed in the chapel building’s choir and orchestra rehearsal rooms.
The new 106,000-square-foot chapel building is intended as a training venue for expository preaching and will also house musical performances, such as the annual presentation of Handel’s “Messiah” by the seminary’s School of Church Music.
The new, larger chapel is a significant upgrade for SWBTS, whose current chapel is unable to accommodate graduation ceremonies and other large events.
“The seminary’s top priority was speech reinforcement,” says Acoustic Dimensions senior consultant Casey Sherred. “The EAW QX speakers allowed us to design a speaker cluster that delivered natural speech reinforcement with great pattern control.”
”This is a very substantial project, and a lot of this chapel is being built around the audio-video systems,” adds project manager Jon Pidgeon, who is based at the Denver office of Ford AV.
The new chapel features two 24-foot by 13.6-foot rear-projection screens, fully equipped high-definition video production and audio production suites, music and theatrical production rehearsal rooms that can accommodate over 200 people, and other facilities, Pidgeon reports.
The EAW loudspeakers supplement the chapel’s main left-right arrays. “We have a total of five QX units hanging in one cluster, covered with a fabric orb,” says Pidgeon. “There are two QX side fills and five upper balcony delays that are also QX speakers. The center QX cluster is being used for vocal reinforcement only, but they have the option in the DSP to also use it for live performances.”
The full range, three-way model QX564 and QX596 loudspeakers respectively provide coverage over a 60-degree by 45-degree and 90-degree by 60-degree dispersion pattern.
Andrew Welker, Ford AV engineer on the project, adds, “We’ve also installed some two-way, full range UB52 speakers for the under balcony and for front fill. We have four AX Series units for choir monitors and there are two rehearsal rooms that have other AX speakers in them. We’re using UX8800 DSP units in conjunction with another processor.”
SWBTS is an outgrowth of the theological department established at Baylor University in Waco, Texas in 1901. It moved to its present location on Seminary Hill in Fort Worth in 1910 and was placed under the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1925.
The seminary has trained and sent out more than 40,000 graduates to serve in local churches and on missions around the world since its founding.
