Sitting in a sprawling campus in the Bothell community outside Seattle, Cedar Park Church been growing each year since its humble beginnings in 1970. When the time recently came to upgrade the sound in the 970-seat main auditorium, a Clair Brothers was chosen to achieving an acoustical design for the future and with an eye on coming building modifications.

‘No architectural changes had to be made,’ Steve Palermo, owner, Lift AV, consultant and project manager of the new system, explains. ‘However, we did spec the system for the church’s planned future renovations. The Clair Brothers kiTCurve12 system was designed to accommodate future renovations without requiring any further system enhancements or funding.’

Cedar Park Church’s old system was overdue for replacement. The first step of the physical installation was the removal of all 18 old speakers, ten amplifiers and a long-passed-its-prime system processor. ‘The idea was to significantly reduce the amplifier footprint and amperage requirements while making a huge improvement in fidelity, output and headroom,’ Palermo says. ‘With the new four-per-side kiTCurve12 system, a significant improvement was made to the stage site lines thanks to the incredibly elegant form factor of the system.’

Palermo and his Lift AV team worked closely with Andy Soemo, sound and recording pastor at Cedar Park Church, to determine the best speaker system choice. Their professional expectations for this project were high.

‘I provided several options and discussed pro and cons of each,’ Palermo says. ‘Andy and I determined we wanted the very best loudspeaker components available, but our choice had to meet certain expectations: clarity of high-impact sound, dispersion with the least number of boxes, minimal site line obstruction and, of course, long-term return on investment. Andy and I also agreed a cabinet with 12-inch speakers would be best to achieve smoother sound in the lower midrange. Taking all of this into consideration, Clair Brothers was an easy choice.’

The room is quite wide, so horizontal dispersion and vertical dispersion had to be carefully considered. Another consideration was that the auditorium has two large projection screens left and right of the stage so placement of the speakers, although purposefully minimal, still had to be strategic so as not to block projection.

Now that the install is complete, Palermo has had time to experience it firsthand: ‘I’m really happy about the kiTCurve12s because the 12-inch drivers provide a big full range response even without subwoofers. The speakers also provide excellent coverage in a room that is very wide with very little perceptible SPL and frequency drop off. There’s superb headroom and the kiTCurve12s are consistent from low to high volume. Mixing is super easy. I’m more than pleased with how our new Clair Brothers system performs.’

In addition to the kiTCurve12s, Lift AV also installed four individual Clair Brothers 18-inch CS18-II subwoofers because of their low height/high power capability, with Clair Brothers/Lab.gruppen multichannel amps for the kiTCurve12s and subs. An Allen & Heath dLive S7000 console was installed for FOH and a dLive C1500 was put in the auditorium’s broadcast room. Also included in the FOH system is a Waves Sound Grid for additional plug-ins.

‘Our design met and exceeded all the church’s requirements,’ concludes Palermo. ‘Henry Hissrich, business development manager at Clair Brothers, was integral in assuring our confidence that we had the specifications spot on. Henry and his Clair Brothers team are top notch professionals who made our experience pleasant and effortless. I can also honestly say that the Pastor and everyone involved at Cedar Park Church had smiling faces from the moment we turned the new system on. Such an improvement and a relief for them, because now they can focus on their message and singers & musicians can concentrate on putting on great performances.

‘It’s truly fun to watch when they can be passionate and creative without limitations, especially sound system limitations. That is more than anyone can ask for.’

More: www.clairbrothers.com