With its mix of traditional and contemporary worship styles, Pennsylvania’s Bethany Grace Fellowship church had struggled with an outdated sound system insufficient for the size of the space until the church management recently elected to upgrade it – resulting in the installation of PreSonus CDL12 loudspeakers and CDL18s subwoofers.
A full-service audiovisual integration firm that services the worship, broadcast,and commercial markets, Horizon AVL contracted to design and deploy the new system. After consulting with the church to ascertain goals and expectations, Horizon AVL CEO, Joshua Kell, proposed a system comprising six PreSonus CDL12 Constant Directivity Loudspeakers augmented by two CDL18s Active Subwoofers.
‘The sanctuary at Bethany Grace Fellowship is 100ft wide and 58ft deep from the front of the stage to the rear of room while ceiling height is 26ft,’ Kell explains. ‘The stage faces into the length of the room and seating is fixed to accommodate 500 people. Services include teachings from the Bible, using spoken word with musical accompaniment by a band, as well as a variety of announcements, a greeting, an offering, and a variety of video clips and related media.’
‘It was crucial that the new sound system offer a high degree of speech intelligibility in addition to excellent music reproduction capabilities, and this is precisely what led us to select the new PreSonus CDL Series loudspeakers,’ Kell says. ‘The CDL loudspeakers are extremely versatile—making them a great choice for a wide range of installed sound applications. For this space, we painted the enclosures white so that they would blend seamlessly into the aesthetics of the room.’
The loudspeaker design was penned by Horizon AVL Senior Design Engineer Kevin Cermak and Account Executive Kip Kipphorn. The mono/end-fire configuration consists of six CDL12 Constant Directivity Loudspeakers flown three each for the left and right sides over the front edge of the stage area, with each array pointing out from center 20°. For low-frequency support, the CDL12 arrays are augmented by two CDL18s subs. For each CDL12 array, a CDL18s is flown in an end-fire position behind the cluster. The system is interconnected via a LAN.
When queried about those attributes that made the PreSonus CDL Series loudspeakers well suited for this installation project, Kell offered the following thoughts, ‘First and foremost, the CDL Series sound terrific. The CDL12 delivers a highly focused pattern with consistent SPL throughout the frequency response range, both on- and off-axis. With its 120˚ horizontal dispersion pattern, coverage is consistent from one side of the room to the other – a crucial consideration in a space that is considerably wider than it is deep. Equally important, the CDL12’s 420Hz crossover frequency minimises comb filtering and doesn’t compete with conventional vocal range. And the fact that you are able to individually control the shade of each box was a tremendous benefit.’
With many installation projects, questions arise, so responsive support services are vitally important. In this regard, Kell rates PreSonus highly: ‘As usual, PreSonus’ customer and technical support were spot on. All questions were answered quickly and thoroughly. Kudos also go out to Lienau Associates’ Chris Hutnick for providing us additional assistance along the way.’
‘The sound is a major upgrade that I think will really be an asset to our worship and Sunday service ministries,’ reports Sheldon Reiff, Bethany Grace Fellowship’s Technical Director. ‘Thanks to everyone at Horizon who were involved. I appreciate the effort to get everything done inside of a week and I know there were some long hours put in by the Horizon AVL crew.’
