The need to connect with an audience is a vital concern in any application, but all the more so in a house of worship. “It’s a recurring theme,” says Craig Beyrooti, designer of a new sound reinforcement system at Calvary Chapel in Melbourne, Florida. “I’ve been told this so many times by worship leaders – they need to connect with the audience and it’s absolutely vital for the engineer and the sound system to enable them to do that.”
Over the course of the past year, Beyrooti, also the head of Atlantic Pro Audio, the design/build contractor on the project, had been exploring the possibilities for creating a system for Calvary Chapel which does just that.
The impetus for the build was the construction of another worship facility, into which Calvary’s pre-existing system would be placed. At the initial Melbourne campus, with its balcony seating area and 3,000-seat capacity, the idea was to provide a slightly more powerful system.
In the end, Beyrooti specified six Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q/BP amplifiers to power the mains – a Turbosound Flex Array made up of 24 TFA-600H loudspeakers, 12 TFA-600L bass cabinets and TCS-61/106 loudspeakers, as well as two NuQ-10 loudspeakers. Two more FP+ 10000Q/BP amplifiers were added to the pre-existing monitor system as well.
The Lab.gruppen amplifiers were chosen for reasons of flexibility, power, sonic purity, and the inclusion of Dolby Lake processing, he says, adding, “the high channel count, and, of course, the quality is second to none. Once we got the system installed and fired up, it was fantastic.”
Calvary Chapel Senior Audio Engineer Greg Branch, a long-time touring veteran, is drawn to the functionality of the Lake controllers, Beyrooti explains. “There are many good amplifiers out there, but Greg really liked the idea of having that capability. If he wants to time align the PA he can do it collectively as one system, using the Lake controllers versus getting into each component.”
