The First Baptist Church of Hudson has always celebrated that fact that its congregation includes people from all walks of life. Recently the church constructed a new Christian Life Center to serve the diverse needs of their members and act as a companion building to their existing sanctuary.
“Acoustically, the facility was quite challenging,” says Tony Parker, President of Parkers Productions, and designer and integrator on the project. The main space is a gymnasium with a stage on one side, a commercial kitchen at the other end, hardwood floors, hard surfaces and large windows.
“That’s why we chose Tannoy QFlex,” Parker explains. “They weren’t interested in a lot of acoustic treatment because of the cost, but in a reverberant room like that you need to be able to control the sound. We’d used QFlex on a similar project at Bethel Baptist Church’s Vision Center in North Wilkesboro and it worked great, so I was confident it would fit the bill here.”
After taking on the project in mid-2012, Parker worked closely with First Baptist’s Minister of Music and Senior Adults, Paul Renfrow, to ensure that the system suited the decidedly multi-purpose space with a 750 person max capacity. The venue was intended to host events ranging from exercise classes, basketball games and concerts, to meetings, wedding receptions and services featuring a full electric praise band and, occasionally, choirs and soloists.
Parker specified a pair of QFlex 32 digitally steerable arrays and mounted them fourteen feet high on both sides of the stage. Additionally, he specified two third party subs for low frequency support.
“The first row of chairs is about fourteen feet from the back wall, so we used Tannoy’s VNET software to align the sound accordingly,” Parker says.
Logistically, sonically and aesthetically, QFlex was an excellent fit. “If we’d put a cluster of speakers in the center of the room they’d get beat to death by basketballs. With QFlex, you can mount the loudspeakers flat on the wall and if you don’t know what you’re looking for you don’t even notice them.”
Used for the reinforcement of speech, recorded and live music, QFlex delivers highly intelligible sound exactly where the church needs it. “When the choir and soloists sing in the gym, they sound fantastic,” Renfrow says. “It’s amazing the sound that you get from such small speaker arrays.”
Tony Parker has worked in professional audio for thirty-six years and founded Parkers Productions LLC. in 1998 to provide audio, video, lighting, projection, telecommunications, production design and installation services for the Southeastern United States’ corporate, special event and house of worship market.
