The Fountain of Truth Church in inner-city Detroit recently created a safe place for youth to gather that not only keeps them out of trouble, but provides them with genuinely cool activities and events that are physically, intellectually and spiritually engaging.
Dubbed the Righteous Youth Church, the space is flexible enough to accommodate basketball and other indoor sports, as well as performances and church services using modular seating that rolls out from the wall.
Detroit-area AV contractor Sound Planning Communications provided the Righteous Youth Church with a new sound system on short notice using Symetrix‘ new Jupiter series of “zero learning curve” DSP units, which gives the modest system ideal processing power and required a setup time best measured in minutes, not hours.
“The Righteous Youth Church isn’t trying to be cool, it is cool,” said Nathan Cole, project manager at Sound Planning.
“Not only does the stage accommodate plays and church services, but it has a fully functioning DJ booth. The church was planning to fly in a well known DJ from Atlanta for a party that would celebrate the opening of the space, but a string of logistical snafus meant the space still had no sound, video and lighting systems only two weeks before the event.”
Righteous Youth Church contacted several area AV companies for help. Only Sound Planning Communications could commit to the accelerated timeline that was required. Cole recalled, “We were contacted by them on a Wednesday, had a signed contract by Friday, and had the system installed and fully functional a week later!”
The system consists of Apogee AE-5 bi-amped, full-range boxes supported by a Danley Sound Labs TH-115 subwoofer. Seven Yamaha monitors cover the stage. An existing Mackie mixer forms the input and principle user interface for the system, outputting a left-right main mix and three separate monitor mixes into the inputs of a Symetrix Jupiter 8. QSC RMX-series amplifiers power the Apogee full-range boxes, Danley sub, and Yamaha monitors.
“We’ve been fans of the Symetrix and SymNet lines of DSP products for a long time,” said Cole. “We figured this was the perfect project for the Jupiter processor. Like so many smaller jobs, the Righteous Youth Church has a straight-forward system that simply requires some good input and output conditioning.”
Sound Planning’s technician uploaded the “Gating Automixer 1” app. “Not that we needed the gating per se, we bypassed that,” said Cole. “Rather, that app gave us a straightforward 8×8 matrix mixer with crossovers for the loudspeakers and sub, as well as overall EQ to tune the room. Because it has a fixed architecture with modules in place, it took a very short time for our field tech to dial in the routing, crossovers, limiting, and system EQ.”
“The system sounds great,” he continued, “and the opening event drew quite a crowd. The Symetrix Jupiter delivered on its promise of great sounding processing with remarkably simple setup.”
“The system’s high-end is smooth and articulated and its low-end is ample and robust. The church had originally wanted multiple dual-18 subs, but their budget couldn’t support that. I suggested the Danley box because it delivers a tremendous amount of output for the dollar. They may eventually add a second, but it’s hardly necessary. It thumps like crazy in there!”
Said Ken Yonker, multimedia project coordinator at Fountain of Truth Church, “We had about three hundred-plus kids at the opening ceremony.”
“They really enjoyed themselves and it was great to bring an event like this to the local community. Not only was the sound awesome, but the Symetrix DSP made the FOH duties a lot less troublesome and provided a virtually worry-free mix set-up. I was impressed.”
