The 1,200-seat worship sanctuary at the flagship location of Timberlake Church in Redmond, WA has a new sound reinforcement system incorporating flown L-Acoustics Kara IIi line arrays joined by supporting components in a project headed by Colorado-based house of worship integrator Summit Integrated Systems.
Summit project manager Andrew Starke says the design and installation was hardly a “paint-by-numbers” process. “The challenge for fan-shaped auditoriums like this is getting both consistent impact and coverage,” he explains. “There’s a tendency to trade punch for coverage in situations like this, but we didn’t want to do that because the church’s worship style really called for impact.”
The previous PA system dates back to the turn of the century. “The sound in the room tended to be a bit harsh, and coverage was spotty, so those were the main challenges we needed to address,” says Timberlake Church production and technical director Ben Graf, also a longtime pro-AV veteran in the Seattle area, “We were looking for heightened audio and coverage quality, but we were also looking to achieve a new level of impact.”
A tour of some recent church installation projects convinced Timberlake Church’s committee that L-Acoustics was their preferred direction, and then Summit’s design team made key choices: they decided on a combination of six center-hung KS21i subwoofers flown as adjacent three-enclosure hangs in an omni configuration, with another six ground-based KS21i subs deployed in an arc under the stage. “That gave us the impact we needed, both on the floor and in the balcony, letting us dial in exactly the amount of punch needed for each,” says Starke.
The system’s main arrays comprise eight Kara IIi per side, with four A15i per side—three Focus over one Wide—for outfill arrays, a combination chosen for consistency across the room. “The Kara IIi and A15i compression drivers and voicing are very similar,” Starke notes. “With L-Acoustics, there’s a predictable consistency from one box type to the next, letting us mix the boxes as needed, knowing we’ll have uniformity across the entire system. We can pick the boxes based on the coverage the room needs while still achieving impact in every location.”
Three of the new LA7.16i amplified controllers driving the loudspeakers are designed to achieve consistent FIR responses between them, with a pair of LA12X units for the subs. “We were able to get all the power we needed, where we needed it, with fewer amplifiers, which saved us budget while also increasing our resolution,” he says. “That was a huge win for the church.”
The project also included additional key audio infrastructure, including a DiGiCo Quantum225 console with a Waves server rack at front-of-house and a KLANG:konductor in-ear management system for monitors, all on an Optocore network loop.
“We wanted people worshiping here to feel the services as much as hear them,” says Timberlake’s Graf. “The loudspeaker system was crucial for that, and the Kara IIi and A15i not only met those expectations but far exceeded them. In fact, I’d say the sound quality blew us out of the water.”
