Guided by pastors Grant and Jenni Brewster, Island Church leadership recently elected to upgrade the sanctuary’s sound reinforcement system and, to ensure even coverage, clear speech intelligibility, and robust music reproduction capability, they ultimately selected loudspeakers drawn from the WorxAudio catalog of PreSonus Audio Electronics of Baton Rouge, LA.
Essential Audio Group, a full-service AV design / build and production services firm with offices in Nashville, TN and Seattle, WA, was contracted to design and deploy the new sound system at Island Church. After consulting with church leadership, the Essential Audio Group team ultimately installed a combination of PreSonus WorxAudio X-Series and Wave-Series loudspeakers. John Wilson, president and CEO of Essential Audio Group, who oversees day-to-day operations—including system design—discussed the project and his reasons for selecting the PreSonus WorxAudio products.
“Island Church has a beautiful, contemporary facility whose sanctuary measures roughly 80 feet wide by 70 feet deep with a ceiling height of about 32 feet,” Wilson explains. “This is a typical fan-shaped sanctuary with the stage facing into the shallow portion of the room. As a result, the space has a relatively short depth but is quite wide. The sanctuary has seating for approximately 678 people. Services are contemporary in nature, featuring a full praise band as an integral part of the worship experience. Due to the shape of the room and the important role that music plays in the worship experience, it was crucial that the new sound system be able to provide consistent and even coverage across the entire width of the space while delivering a high level of speech intelligibility and solid music reproduction. These requirements are precisely what led us to the PreSonus WorxAudio loudspeakers.”
The new sound system encompasses a center cluster plus two additional loudspeakers to cover the extreme sides of the space. Centered over the front edge of the stage, the Essential Audio Group team flew a loudspeaker cluster consisting of a WorxAudio XQ10i-P self-powered extended bass loudspeaker along with a WorxAudio X2i-P self-powered all-in-one compact line array. The X2i-P is attached to the bottom of XQ10i-P, thus creating an extended frequency output point source. Low frequency support is handled by a WorxAudio TL218SSi-P self-powered extended bass subwoofer, which resides on the floor—centered in front of the stage.
To cover the far left and right sides of the sanctuary, there are two WorxAudio W-12A high efficiency point source loudspeaker enclosures. These are flown—one per side—over the left- and right-side extremes of the stage area. The entire setup is driven by a Dante audio networking system.
When queried about those attributes that made the PreSonus WorxAudio loudspeakers the best choice for this project, Wilson pointed to audio performance and dispersion. “This system was chosen specifically for the 160-degree horizontal coverage pattern and its exceptional speech intelligibility,” he says. “We added the XQ10i-P to extend the low frequency response and enhance the music reinforcement capabilities of the system. The phase coherence and frequency stability of this loudspeaker system make it possible to achieve a considerable gain before feedback advantage over a more conventional system, this is particularly important for the pastors who use headset mics.”
With many installations of this nature, questions inevitably arise, so capable and responsive manufacturer support services are essential. In this regard, Wilson rates the PreSonus Commercial Audio Division highly, “PreSonus Commercial Division service and support has been phenomenal. They’re easy to get on the phone and if they don’t have the answer immediately they always get back to you quickly. The entire team at PreSonus’ Commercial Division is one of the most supportive I’ve encountered across the industry. Tony Flammia, director of the Commercial Audio Division, was employed to tune and voice the system.”
The new sound reinforcement system at Island Church was installed, commissioned, and placed into service in April 2018. Since that time, Wilson reports the project has been a huge success. “We’ve been very pleased with the response we’ve had regarding the new system,” says Wilson. “Church officials also report they have received many compliments from members of the congregation and the worship team has found renewed excitement working with a system that compliments and supports their offering.”
