ENID,
Oklahoma – Since its founding in the early 1980s, Emmanuel Baptist Church has
grown into a strong congregation that hosts three worship services on Sundays
alone and activities that serve a broad range of adults, youth, students and
other groups in the community. The church was overdue for an A/V/L system renovation
and turned to Springfield, Missouri integrator, Paragon 360 for an upgraded
audio system featuring HARMAN’s Crown, BSS Audio and JBL components to meet the
needs of its contemporary worship environment.
“This
project was a full renovation with a major architectural redesign of the entire
worship center. It involved new audio,
acoustics, lighting, staging and video systems as well as new scenic elements
custom designed for the church,” said Mark Coble, Audio/Acoustics Design and
Commissioning specialist at Paragon 360.
For this project, Coble and his design/build team needed to satisfy the
requirements of three distinct groups: those attending traditional services
with a choir; a more blended worship experience with praise singers and a band;
and a modern, contemporary worship service.
Coble
also noted that Emmanuel Baptist Church’s pastor likes to deliver passionate
sermons and wanted to get his voice down to a whisper and still be heard by all
the church’s congregants. “Before the update, he felt like he had to yell at
times to get everyone to hear him.” In
addition, Coble noted that the system had to be more than just a “house PA” –
it needed to have the capabilities of a concert sound rig. “The church hosts touring
artists and didn’t want to have to deal with them bringing in their own gear.
They needed a system that would have a large input count and deliver the high
SPL that is often required for these performances.”
Before
undertaking the project, church officials had asked Coble specifically about
JBL and Crown based on their previous positive experiences in other venues. “We
of course were well familiar with the capabilities of HARMAN gear and have had
a lot of success with it. Since this had to be a really dynamic PA, I knew that
JBL VERTEC® line arrays and Crown amps would be the perfect fit for
this application.”
Paragon
360 deployed eight VERTEC
VT4886 subcompact line array elements
and a VT4883 dual-12-inch subcompact arrayable subwoofer in three main flown
clusters each at the left, center and right of the auditorium. Two JBL STX828S
subwoofers were placed in custom subwoofer enclosures located in the face of
the stage and four AC28/26 compact 2-way loudspeakers serve as overhead monitors
for the choir. Nine AC25 ultra-compact loudspeakers deliver under-balcony fill
and four STX812M 12-inch stage monitors cover the pulpit/stage area.
Seven
Crown I-Tech 12000HD amplifiers power the main line arrays and subwoofers. Two
Crown DCi Series 4|600 amplifiers drive the under-balcony and monitor loudspeakers,
with a DCi 2|600 amp handling the choir monitors. The amps and speakers are
networked using a BSS BLU-160 Soundweb London Signal Processor with BLU link in
conjunction with a BLU-BOB break-out box output expander.
“Once
we knew that we were going with JBL VERTEC, the
Crown I-Tech HD amps were a natural fit,” Coble stated. “We knew they would
deliver the kind of horsepower the installation required and we wanted to take
advantage of the amps’ built-in VERTEC
factory presets to optimize the system.”
In
addition to the new audio system, Coble and his crew
also did a significant amount of work adding the necessary acoustical
treatments to optimize the sound of the sanctuary.
“The rig sounds great
and everyone is really happy with the performance,” Coble concluded. “We truly
realized our goal of transforming the space for a new generation of
churchgoers.”
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