In evaluating the success or failure of every house of worship sound reinforcement system, two requirements stand out: coverage and intelligibility.
Does the system provide completely smooth and consistent coverage throughout the entire space? And, can every syllable of every word (and every note of every song) be heard and understood – and even further – within their intended context?
This is the heart of the matter. If a system can’t be heard due to substandard coverage to certain areas, or can’t be understood due to lack of intelligibility, then all other aspects go for naught.
This essential truth of audio most certainly played the starring role in a recent sound system project at Covenant Family Church in College Station, Texas, as well as a sound system for its new sister worship facility located in nearby Bryan, Texas.
AGI Inc., a full-service systems design and integration firm based in Eugene, Oregon, provided complete system and acoustical design services for both venues, utilizing its deep well of collective experience while working closely with church staff in meeting all of their specific goals.
AGI is coming up on the celebration of its seventh anniversary, but the heritage and expertise of the organization goes back a lot further than that.
It’s actually an amalgamation of several veteran Northwestern U.S. firms of various production specialties that decided to unite into a single seamless entity brought together by Kyle Anderson and Steve Diamond. As a result, AGI provides a true turn-key, full-service A/V system design and integration operation to its growing customer base.
“We realized that while we all performed our respective specialties very well, there was a lot of sense in coming together to provide customers with a truly seamless resource to meet all of their system needs,” explains Anderson, adding that the company now has more than 15 full-time staff members and is experiencing very strong growth in providing lighting, video, acoustics, and information technology (IT) design and installation in addition to sound systems for every application.
AGI specializes in working with the church market, which rates as the company’s largest customer base. However, AGI also serves a wide range of other markets, such as business offices, classrooms, restaurants and performing arts centers, with a system project for the 2,500-seat Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene serving as a recent example of the latter.
Anderson notes that AGI receives most of its business referrals via word of mouth and networking, with the Covenant Family Church project proved no exception. While sponsoring and staffing a company booth at a regional “Team Church” conference in Tacoma a couple of years ago, they found themselves engaged in a general system discussion with staff members from the church.
Later, church staff contacted AGI about going forward with their systems projects for the worship center in College Station and a new second worship center project being constructed in a former furniture store in Bryan.