Having operated as a mobile church for more than 20 years, Grace Chapel has now opened a multi-purpose facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, for church services and community outreach. In addition to a sanctuary that doubles as a basketball/volleyball court, the facility hosts classrooms, meeting spaces and a non-profit coffee shop.
With the room’s main loudspeaker location immediately in front of the proscenium wall, rear-radiating energy will potentially reflect back into the room space, interfering with speech intelligibility and clarity of music. In addition, the wide footprint of the audience area requires a solution with precise pattern control to optimise coverage.
To address these issues, Nick Moon from Tone Proper A/V created a high-fidelity sound system for church services and other performances using five Fulcrum Acoustic FL283T Line Array Modules sited on either side of the altar for the main coverage. Fulcrum Acoustic’s patented Passive Cardioid Technology dramatically reduces the rear low frequency radiation from the FL283T, which would otherwise reflect off the wall. ‘Most people don’t realise how much low frequency energy radiates from the back of most line arrays; they aren’t as directional as many assume,’ says Moon. ‘Fulcrum’s Passive Cardioid mitigates that leakage without adding all this extra equipment.
‘The FL283T presents such an effective use of resources. I love working with it,’ he continues. ‘You can deploy a lot of modules without needing too many amp channels. Plus, the vertical coverage from each unit is impressive on its own. We have five FL283Ts in each array but with other products we would need six or seven units to achieve a similar performance.’
The compact Sub218L subwoofers accompanying the FL283T Line Arrays provide low frequency support for the system within the small envelope of the concrete cavities built into the altar. ‘Between the room treatment and the system design, this is one of the best sounding multi-purpose worship spaces out there,’ says Moon.
More: www.fulcrum-acoustic.com
