Church Audio Install (planning stages)

[Jacob Ritz]

My church is relocating to an existing building and are curious what speaker system to install to upgrade from a 25 year old bose panarray system (yuck).

The stage is 16’ x 48’ and the audience seating is about 80’ x 50’ (not including stage) and has roughly 17’ of height. Seats about 250.

I’ve been looking at 3-4 RCF HDL6A lines for each main and cheaper subs like EV ETXs or something in that capacity. Some say point source is better but there is about a 40 degree angle that needs coverage from where speakers need to fly.

Any thoughts?

 

[Helge A. Bentsen]

EAW Anna.

It's expensive, but it's the best PA I've deployed and/or mixed on.

For a cheaper option, Martin MLA or Martin WPC.

 

[Rob Timmerman]

What coverage angles do you need to hit from the speaker hang points (both for folks in coverage, and where you want no coverage)? How far from the hang to the closest and furthest listeners? And what's your rough budget?

In my experience, a hang of 4 baby array boxes has similar performance to a medium-sized trap box. While the array boxes have better flexibility for portable systems and lighter per-box weight, the trap boxes will usually sound better and may have more choices for dispersion pattern.

On the HDL-6a in particular, if you look at the off-axis response, you'll find that it only has about a 60 degree wide coverage angle through the vocal range, with the added bonus of wide coverage of the boom and sizzle. So not high on my list of boxes for use indoors. Personally, I'd be looking at install-specific trap boxes from established players (e.g. Fulcrum, Danley, EAW) instead of MI-grade baby array boxes, and with external amplification (should be lower installation cost)

 

[Stephen Siegel]

Suggest making a model in EASE Focus (its free) to evaluate coverage resulting from different speaker strategies. Can also help minimize excess energy hitting walls, etc. This might also help you evaluate cost vs. coverage of line array vs point source, etc.

 

[James McMullen]

I have no idea what your budget is but EASE is a good place to start. Though before I got into that I would address any acoustical issues you may have. You can hang top shelf speakers but if the room has problems you won't have any or at least compromised intelligibility. The ability to understand the word is the whole point. Much lesser systems (money) perform quite adequately in a well behaved (acoustically) room. I would do some research on the Danley speakers. They make point source boxes that can really get loud and still sound pretty good. They aren't inexpensive but two of those averaged out against a six box per side line array works out pretty well. Just food for thought.

PS We still carry old Bose panarray boxes in the inventory. Depending on your application they still sound good. No horn driver to honk at you. You definitely need to have use the processor with it.