A new 4,400-seat, three-story church in the Ghanaian capital of Accra has been equipped with a sound reinforcement system featuring Martin Audio Wavefront Precision (WPC) line arrays.
Part of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), with a global outreach overseen by founder, Rev. Dr. Mensa Otabil, the sound consultancy and installation were undertaken by London-based Ghanaian production engineer and integrator Eben Awuah of Amson Audio. Awuah has been working with professional sound systems since the age of 13, having been associated with the Dominion Centre, Wood Green, and specified many world leading brands along the way. He first became aware of Martin Audio four or five years ago while working as production engineer for another company.
“But the time came when I wanted to set up my own AV operation to serve the whole of West Africa, including Nigeria and the Ivory Coast,” Awuah says. “I needed to go back there with a recognized system and Martin Audio was one of the premier brands I was looking at.”
A turning point came when he attended a Martin Audio open day three years ago, just as the plan for Christ Temple East was being outlined, and heard a scalable Wavefront Precision Compact optimized array for the first time. “It coincided with just having finished an installation in Nigeria [with another leading system],” he notes. “Although that sounded great, what I heard from WPC gave me the headroom I needed for this project.”
This was in his mind when he was brought in as a consultant by the ICGC for the new project, described as a ‘Pentecostal Charismatic church’. “We earmarked four major systems and I was asked to give the pros and cons of each and explain which would be the better choice for the church,” with Awuah then asked to undertake the installation.
“We are the only church in Ghana with an opera group, a classical band, a harmonized choir and rock ‘n’ roll band,” he adds. “WPC not only gave us more warmth than the other systems, but we needed a stronger lower end that we just couldn’t find elsewhere. It gave us that little bit of extra headroom with all the drivers hitting the right frequencies within the box, whereas I really struggled [with the other main system under consideration.] As for speech reproduction, the clarity from WPC is second to none.”
The system includes two hangs of 10 WPC elements and two hangs of eight, used in combination with hangs of six SXCF118 (1 x 18) cardioid subwoofers flown behind each hang. There is further ground stacked sub reinforcement of 12 SXH218 (2 x 18), set across the wide stage in blocks of 2-4-4-2. The line arrays are powered by 10 iKON iK81’s and the subs by five iK42. The system is run in 1-box resolution for added control, consistency and coverage.
A dozen CDD8loudspeakers are deployed as stage lip fills and another 12 XE300s serve as floor monitors, powered by four iKON iK42 amplifiers. The vast number of support function rooms and ancillary areas in the building also have their sound delivered by more than 140 Martin Audio C6.8T ceiling loudspeakers.
System design assistance came from Martin Audio product support engineer Robin Dibble. “We just loaded the system files from Display 2.3 via VU-NET and with the minimum of tweaking it was ready to go,” Awuah says. “This system just works, even though there is still more work to do on the room.”
The installation has certainly met with the approval of ICGC founder/overseer and pastor Dr. Otabil, who predicted that “This must be the best sound system in the whole of West Africa.”
