As the style of worship at Colorado’s St Andrew United Methodist Church has evolved, the church has had to revise its sound system to accommodate live performances and playback – a role its the sound system was unsuited to, having been designed for more traditional spoken word sermons. Determined to transform not just the sound quality but the overall experience of the congregation, the church’s leadership began the search for a solution.
Crucially, the new system needed to deliver audio quality and flexibility without requiring major construction changes to the church itself – a challenge that was given to regional systems integrator Equalized Productions, with Operations Manager and Project Engineer Chris Malmgren quickly settling on TW AUDiO’s Ella.
‘The architectural design of St Andrew UMC is inspirational, and it was essential that nothing in the sanctuary distract from the impact of that visual experience,’ explains Mick Whelan of TW AUDiO USA.
‘A custom acoustical cloud is suspended above the altar and the audio system must blend with this structure as effortlessly as possible, evolving, not standing away from it. Colour matching was essential.’
In addition, there is no acoustic treatment within the sanctuary, meaning the new system needed to offer exceptional dispersion control to minimise reflections. The room itself also presented challenges. The worship space is asymmetrical, requiring a design that featured different deployment left to right but which still sonically matched. Finally, a large choir is seated beneath the organ pipes along the room’s right wall; while energy from the array needs to be kept away from these seats it is essential that the array cover the congregation members seated just a few yards away. It was clear that a cardioid line array solution was required.
Working with the TW AUDiO engineering team in Germany, Equalized Productions set about creating a system design that would ultimately not just meet the expectations of St Andrew United Methodist Church, but exceed them. In particular, the team invested a great deal of time into accurate planning and implementation in order to achieve even coverage side to side and front to back, despite heavy restrictions on where loudspeakers would be positioned due to available support and the décor.
The completed solution now comprises two hangs of eight cardioid Ella6 elements per side flown in a LR configuration to address the room’s irregular shape, plus a single M8 for side fill and a cardioid subwoofer centre hang of one S32i. Power for the system is courtesy of two Powersoft Quattrocanali 8804 Dante + DSP amplifiers.
With the installation now complete, Malmgren is delighted with the results and the collaboration that helped to deliver them: ‘Working with Mick Whelan and the team at TW AUDiO has been a great experience,’ he says. ‘During the design process they aided our understanding of their products and capabilities. This system is colour matched and even with the heavy challenges in Europe due to the pandemic they worked hard to meet our deadline and kept in great communication. The TW AUDiO team travelled to the installation during the commissioning to work with the Equalized Productions team and ensure that the system met their stringent performance requirement.
‘The new system is nothing short of amazing – it hits every seat in the church evenly and clearly,’ he adds. ‘The seams between the arrays and the fill speaker are non-existent and the sonic quality of the entire room has jumped drastically, well beyond what we even expected in the design phase.’
