Music plays a huge part in daily worship at Life City Church – a modern, vibrant multicultural church in the heart of South London – with live bands regularly providing a focus for Sunday meetings, supported by a new sound reinforcement system from K-array, supplied by Audio Related Technology.
The church’s older Turbosound PA had served it well but had become tired and was inconvenient to move around, as while looking for a permanent home the church was operating out of Woodcote High School in Coulsdon. And with growing use of live music in its regular activities, Life an update of its sound and lighting was needed.
‘We wanted a portable line array system for a predominantly live band mix,’ says Life City Director and Pastor, Steve Sutherland. ‘Our main requirements were for better sound quality and, very importantly, ease of setting up as we frequently have to move the PA into position on the school hall stage for Sunday worship. Also as we are a charity the total budget of £60k had to cover all the audio gear including speakers, mics and in-ears and everything else.’
Simon Griffett of Chesham-based Audio Related Technology Griffett took the Pastor and a couple of Life City colleagues to UK distributor 2B Heard’s HQ, where Dave Wooster set up a demo of a portable K-array Pinnacle-KR402 system comprising Kayman-KY102 compact line arrays on top of Thunder-KMT21 subwoofers.
‘When Steve and his team saw the system their first reaction was like a lot of people who have not recently experienced a modern design PA speaker system: ‘How is that going to fill the room like the old rig, it’s only half the size?’,’ says Griffett When Dave played some tracks with just a flat EQ profile on the system the look on their faces went from disbelief to a wide smile.’
The system is configured as a standard LR stereo PA with one active sub and one passive, making the most efficient use of the amplifier with its onboard DSP, and the Kayman line arrays simply and securely connect in a vertical line above.
‘We can have the whole system up and running in less than ten minutes and the tops just pack away in a really compact flightcase,’ says Sutherland. ‘Portability was a big deal for us as the school is not our permanent home, and we are future-proofed for when we do move into our own facility as we will then be able to rig the system and have it permanently available for use.
‘We’re really pleased with the K-array system,’ he reports. ‘The sound quality is really, really good and portability is excellent. We have a number of professional musicians who come in and play for us and they all remark on how good it sounds. Definition is crystal clear; bass guitar and kick drum really punch through, and the guitars sound fabulous. We may not be sound professionals but we know what we like, and we’re happy that we now have a really professional set-up.’
Simon Connell-Flynn frequently engineers at Life City, and found a marked difference when the K-array system was introduced. ‘We listened to a past Sunday service going through the desk and the speaker system. Within half an hour we had it sounding better than the previous system – much fuller, more low end extension, a lot more intelligibility in the highs,’ he says. ‘It’s quite surreal actually as the volume and response is very consistent as you walk around the room.
‘I remember the feeling when the Pastor, our drummer and I first saw the K-array system at 2B Heard’s demonstration facility, we thought ‘surely these aren’t going to do the job?’ And then Dave turned them on and we were blown away.
‘They look great as well – we didn’t want to distract people with bulky looking gear in a church setting so the form factor fits in really well. They’re thin, and they’re light, and they’re easy to set up. I don’t think we’d even have come close to what we need with any other speaker system.’
Griffett recalls the ease of system commissioning: ‘After the initial delivery and set-up Dave dialled in remotely on a Sunday morning to make a few tweaks to the sub settings. This shows the level of support and service that 2B Heard provides.’
