The Epic Church International in Sayreville, New Jersey, recently upgraded its sanctuary sound reinforcement with New York-based A/V specialist Advanced Audio handling design and installation of a DAS Audio system.
After consulting with church management, Burton A Ishmael, Advanced Audio’s owner/operator and chief systems designer selected DAS Audio Aero-20A compact line array enclosures, accompanied by UX-218A and UX-221A powered subwoofers.
‘The sanctuary at Epic Church is really quite impressive as well as challenging,’ Ishmael reports. ‘The room is fan shaped and includes a wrap-around balcony. The space measures 150ft at the maximum spread and the length is 120ft with a ceiling height of 40ft. Seating is fixed and cushioned, and the room’s capacity is approximately 2,300.
‘Services are contemporary in nature, and there are both a praise team of vocalists as well as a full instrumental backup band. Because of this, it was crucial for the new sound system to not only have excellent speech intelligibility characteristics, it also needed first rate music reproduction and the dynamic capability to deliver the full frequency spectrum as well as consistent frequency response with sufficient SPL throughout the space.
‘Further, the ability to control and monitor the loudspeaker system at FOH was a requirement.’
To address these requirements, Ishmael and his team installed three main loudspeaker clusters at LCR, each cluster comprising six Aero-20A enclosures. Further out into the room, there are two delay loudspeaker clusters for the left and right balcony area – each comprising four Aero-20A enclosures. For low frequency support, the Advanced Audio team flew eight UX-218A subwoofers – four each for the left and right sides, behind the left and right Aero-20A clusters. There are also four UX-221A ultra low frequency subwoofers groundstacked in front of the stage, two enclosures each for the left and right sides.
‘While the ability to reproduce music naturally with wide dynamic range while still having excellent speech intelligibility were critical considerations, uniform frequency coverage throughout suitable sound pressure levels were equally important,’ Ishmael explains. ‘The Aero-20As are not only musical, their horizontal dispersion characteristics do a great job of providing even coverage throughout the space. Equally, these loudspeakers don’t interfere with line-of-sight considerations, and this was particularly important because there are left, centre and right LED screens mounted above the stage area. DAS Audio’s DASnet audio management software took care of the networking and monitoring of all components in the system.’
The installation was completed in late October 2020, and the equipment was in service immediately after. Since that time, Ishmael reports the new sound system has met with resounding success: ‘I’ve received numerous compliments from church management and members of the congregation have also commented on how clear and natural sounding the new system is. I believe the church will get many years’ service from this system. It’s been a rewarding experience for everyone involved.’
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