From its humble beginnings, Lafayette’s Family Life Church has grown to its present 1,500 congregation – prompting a recent upgrade of its sanctuary sound systems using WorxAudio loudspeakers.
Commercial A/V integration company Sight and Sound Technologies services the HOW, education, theatrical, and conference markets, and was contracted to design and install the new system. Company COO Kris Johnson oversees all aspects of the company’s operations, including system design. After consulting with church management to ascertain its requirements, the Sight and Sound design team, along with members of PreSonus’ Commercial Division, designed a new SR system that includes WorxAudio V5T-P ultra-compact line array elements and WorxAudio X115S high SPL bass loudspeaker enclosures.
‘The sanctuary at Family Life Church measures approximately 140ft wide by 90ft deep,’ Johnson reports. ‘The stage faces into the width of the room and the area is designed to accommodate 1200 – 1500 people with fixed seating. Given the width of the space, it was crucial to develop a system that provided consistent coverage across the entire area. To address this challenge, we ultimately deployed a system that consisted of three loudspeaker clusters.’
The system Johnson and his team installed consists of 18 WorxAudio V5T-P line arrays. There are five enclosures each for the left and right hangs, while the centre cluster consists of eight elements. At the top of each loudspeaker cluster, there is a WorxAudio X115S high SPL bass loudspeaker. Being that the previous loudspeaker system had sub bass enclosures positioned under the stage, these loudspeakers continue to be used. As a result, the WorxAudio X115S Bass enclosures were tuned to cut off at approximately 100Hz – providing low-end support without interfering with the subwoofers. All loudspeakers are Dante-enabled to ensure system control and ease of system cabling.
‘Services are contemporary in nature and music plays a vital role, so high level music reproduction capabilities were every bit as important a speech intelligibility,’ Johnson explains. ‘With their 120° horizontal dispersion, we determined that an LCR three-cluster design would provide the even coverage we needed while the Dante integration into the system’s amplification would provide all the control we deemed necessary.’
For many installation projects, questions inevitably arise, so capable support services are crucial. ‘During the design phase of this project, we made it clear we were looking for a self-powered Dante-enabled system, and so the PreSonus guys came to our shop and demonstrated the V5T enclosures,’ he says. ‘We quickly realised the Family Life church job would be a great room for this system. We were very impressed with PreSonus’ interest in our project and the capabilities of the loudspeakers. Better yet, the PreSonus team took an active interest in the project and followed up all the way through completion.’
With the project completed, Johnson reports his client is pleased: ‘We worked closely with our customer to ensure we delivered a system that met their expectations. This new system represents a huge upgrade over what they had before, and I’m pleased to report they are loving it. We’ve received numerous compliments from both church officials and members of the congregation. The feedback we’ve received from the church and the support provided by PreSonus made this a very positive experience for everyone involved.’
