It’s an old and familiar story to sound reinforcement contractors.
A church with a growing congregation moves to a new, larger building. Finances are tight so in an effort to save money, the old sound system is brought from the old location to the new setting – and not only doesn’t it do the job, it creates a worse sound situation. That was the dilemma that the World Revival Church in Kansas City, Mo., found itself in.
The nondenominational church was founded in 1984 by Steve and Kathy Gray in the quiet farming community of Smithton, Mo., as the Smithton Community Church. But under the charismatic leadership of the Grays, the movement, known as the Smithton Outpouring, outgrew its building and the community. In March of 2000, the church – now the World Revival Church – relocated to 9900 View High Drive in Kansas City.
“They were not happy with the sound system, which had come out of the old church in Smithton. When they drove it up high enough to be heard in the back of the new building, it was just killing the people in the front, metaphorically speaking,” said Brent Baker of Utopian Sound Systems of Joplin. Mo., who was brought in by the church administration to see what could be done. “They didn’t like the musicality or the speech intelligibility, and they were looking for a new approach to fix the problem.”
The auditorium was a relatively large space, 100 feet wide by 150 feet deep, with a fairly high ceiling reaching a peak of 38 feet at the very top, according to Baker. With so much open overhead space, he opted for a flown system. “I had used BAG END speakers on a stadium job and was very happy with the throw patterns and frequency response of their Crystal speaker cabinets. Because of they provided very high-output from compact enclosures, I thought they would work very well in this application,” Baker said. He sent Henry Heine, BAG END’s director of engineering and research, a set of CAD drawings and asked for some recommendations.
“Using some of Henry’s suggestions, we designed a system utilizing with a main cluster of three Crystals and Time-Aligned four satellite Crystals with the main cluster,” Baker said. “We combined that system with an ELF subwoofer system.” He flew the clusters at 20 to 22 feet in the air and drove them down, essentially a technique similar to lighting the space. The four satellite speakers are delayed to the main cluster and teamed with four BAGEND D18E-I double-18 subwoofer cabinets controlled by the BAG END ELF-1 processor.
Utilizing some components from the old system, Baker did a three-way split. “We have a SR40x8 Mackie for front-of-house and took their existing Allen-Heath GL2200, 40-channel mixer to use for the monitor mix. We installed a recording booth with a Mackie 32x8 studio console with a 24-channel expander and meter bridge for a total of 56 channels,” Baker said. “We also used the HDR-24 hard disk recorder. It has SMPTE time code, which allows them the flexibility to sync video for broadcast. They use five exchangeable hard drives to record services. Each hard drive will hold one service.”
Baker and church officials were very pleased with the result “We like to say we lighted the room with sound,” Baker said. “You can walk anywhere in the space and the sound is seamless – you can’t tell where one speaker stops and the next one starts. The system moves a lot of air very efficiently. We were getting some really good SPL readings in the room without pushing the system hard.”
Bill Gilpin, the church’s administrator, concurred. “I love it,” he said. “It’s a great sound system for the price and for what we wanted to accomplish. We listened to several systems before Brent demonstrated the BAG END speakers, and they were the choice for us.” But Baker saved his best comment for last; “This is the best sound reinforcement system we have ever installed. The sound is phenomenal,” he concluded.
