The recent renovation included of Pasadena Community Church has seen its acoustics improved, its seating reorganised and a new sound system installed by North Port, Florida-based Pro Audio Services. The congregation enjoys traditional services featuring pipe organ, piano and choir, as well as contemporary services featuring a praise band fronted by the Connect 3 vocal trio.
Built in the late 1960s, the church’s multifaceted sanctuary presents numerous acoustical challenges – its unusual shape represent reflective surfaces at assorted angles in a room built of plenty of concrete with a ceiling that peaks at about 75ft above the floor.
Part of the improved acoutic was achieved by reducing the seating from approximately 1,100 to about 800, updating the wooden. Most of the seating area is in an expanded fan shape. Spoken word intelligibility and clarity for musical performances proved significant issues beyond the capability of the church’s outdated sound system.
Deciding that the new sound system would be needed before Easter 2018, the church’s leaders called in Pro Audio Services owner Chris Bertler, who designed and installed a new sound system featuring Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5-series steerable arrays.
‘I’ve driven by the church many times for many years, and I was curious about the inside,’ Bertler says. ‘It’s an oddly shaped space; all those angles you see from outside are there on the inside. When sound hits those surfaces, they throw it back at an angle down into the room. It’s a tough room. Once I saw the inside, Renkus-Heinz IC Live steerable arrays immediately became the frontrunner. I couldn’t see anything else getting the job done.’
Bertler chose a pair of Renkus-Heinz IC Live ICL-F-Dual-RN arrays, taking advantage of the Iconyx digital beam steering technology to put the sound on the audience and away from the room’s complex reflective surfaces. The ICL-F-Dual-RN can deliver up to eight separate beams, with software-definable opening angles and aiming, so Bertler could direct the sound with great precision. Output is flat from 80Hz-20kHz, and the integrated class-D amplifiers provide more than enough muscle to easily support the Pasadena Community Church’s praise band. ‘I have the ICL-F-Dual-RNs running about 20dB down from zero,’ Bertler notes. The speaker locations are white, so the slender, low-profile white ICL-F-Dual-RN enclosures blend in without requiring custom paint work.
To manage the Renkus-Heinz arrays, Bertler installed a Symetrix Jupiter 8 DSP. ‘We were told to piggyback on the old wiring and we didn’t need Dante for this system,’ he explains. ‘The Symetrix Jupiter 8 is a good, effective processor with analogue outputs. We ran fresh wiring from there to the speaker locations, and we equipped each speaker with an RDL TX-AT1S isolation transformer. We also put in a couple of SurgeX FlatPack SA-82 surge protectors. The church already had a Behringer X32 digital console and Shure ULX-series wireless mics.’
The entire process went quickly because the church leaders wanted the system installed by Easter: ‘They placed the order on 12 March,’ Bertler recalls. ‘The Renkus-Heinz speakers hit our shop on 27 March, and we installed them the next day. The system was tuned and ready in time for Easter. And it sounds great – they’re really happy.’
