AVL integration firm Emmaus Media & Design recently implemented Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers to upgrade sound reinforcement in both the 2,000-seat sanctuary as well as youth rooms at Christian Life Assembly, a church in Camp Hill, PA.
Five Danley loudspeakers, including two J2-96 Jericho Horns, replace 38 loudspeakers utilized in the sanctuary’s previous system. “Danley’s point-source loudspeakers can do the work of numerous line array elements,” states Tim James, owner of Emmaus Media & Design. “On top of that, Danley’s phase coherence and fidelity make their boxes sound better than conventional designs. The pattern control is amazing.”
James served as the technical director at Christian Life Assembly for six years and thus knew the frustrations with the old system. “The 38 loudspeakers fired straight down from the ceiling in three concentric delay rings and were original to the now-15-year-old sanctuary,” he says. “The comb filtering was terrible. You were effectively hearing multiple speakers no matter where you sat. When the church was doing more choir and orchestral support, it was passable as true reinforcement, but as they asked more of it in support of more contemporary music, its worst qualities came out. The sound was indistinct and distant.”
The main sanctuary now has a stereo pair of J2-96 Jericho Horns, each powered by its own Danley DNA 20k4 Pro amplifier with integrated DSP and model presets. A pair of SH60 loudspeakers provide mezzanine fill, and a single BC415 subwoofer flown in the center of the room gets underneath the low-end response of the Jericho Horns. Ashly DSP provides the front-end conditioning and Powersoft amplifiers drive the fills and subwoofer. And, four Danley SM100M loudspeakers serve as stage monitors.
The youth room sonic upgrade includes two Danley SM96s and two SM60F combined with a re-purposed subwoofer, while the kids’ room – the church’s original sanctuary – has four SM100 loudspeakers.
Where the old system required six tall racks of amplifiers and their own dedicated, climate-controlled room, the new system only requires a single rack, which James was able to move that rack closer to the catwalk, minimizing cable runs. In fact, the Emmaus Media & Design crew removed over 3,000 feet of loudspeaker wire that was no longer needed. The church has reclaimed the old amp room and is renovating it to serve as a greenscreen video production studio.
“When we first fired up the new Danley system in the sanctuary, I had to verify that the nearfields that we used to use at the mix position weren’t actually on – it sounded that present,” James says. “We were able to do away with the balcony fills and the under-balcony fills, and things sound way better in both of those locations. Christian Life Assembly sells over 19,000 tickets to their Christmas Pageant, and in the past, it was all the engineer could do keep the twenty open mics from feeding back. This year, he was happy to report that he was able to focus on making the mix sound good, which was all the easier with the new Danley fidelity.”
