Houses of Worship — August 4, 2005
Aug 4, 2005 5:52 PM
Houses of Worship Top Story
Large, Small, National, Local: Pick Your Event for Training and Mingling
These days, a worship media specialist who doesn't mind living out of a suitcase could spend a big chunk of the year on the road, traveling to the major national trade shows and conferences that have tailored programs to reach the church market.
Or, if all that "gone" time doesn't appeal, the same specialist could stay close to home and wait for one of the multitude of smaller, regional, or traveling events springing up around the country.
Two trends largely account for the burgeoning of the worship conference and trade show business. First, houses of worship are a big business, and getting bigger all the time. By some accounts, houses of worship represent the healthiest segment of the pro AV marketplace.
Second, the church AV market inevitably involves armies of volunteers to select, maintain, and run the systems, and these non-professionals urgently need the education and networking they get from attending events.
The worship market has become highly visible at what are probably the three leading events in the media business. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has had a multi-day Worship Technology Conference on its agenda for several years now. Last April's event also offered a full-day Media Production Workshop designed for church people.
The next NAB will be April 22-27, 2006, in Las Vegas.
The International Communications Industries Association (ICIA) says church media devotees make up a growing portion of the clientele at its show, Infocomm. Next year's edition is scheduled for June 3 through 9 in Orlando, Fla. In 2005, as in previous years, ICIA partnered with a leading specialist magazine to produce a "Technical Training Tour," offering three days of panels, lectures, and hands-on opportunities.
Primedia Business Magazines and Media (publisher of Sound & Video Contractor) is also in the field as co-sponsor of the Entertainment Technology Show - Lighting Dimensions International (ETS-LDI) exposition, together with the Entertainment Systems and Technology Association (ESTA). EST-LDI typically draws more than 10,000 people to view about 400 company exhibits, and the next edition is coming up on Nov. 7-13 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
Partnering with Technologies for Worship magazine, ETS-LDI will present a program of eight seminars tailored to church interests. Topics include such current interests as "Bridging the Communication Gap Between the Architect and The Contemporary Church." Church media ministers and volunteers aren't limited to portions of big national events, though. A growing number of events devote themselves entirely to churches. Inspiration, for example, comes in East and West versions, with this year's West happening next week in Santa Clara, Calif. Inspiration East 2005 took place in May in Charlotte, N.C.
Sessions on the agenda range from "Modern Electric Bass Technique" to "Multisensory Worship."
The Technical Resource Group (TRG) of Largo, Fla., launched a new event in 2005 called Fusion, which joined TRG's previously established Techxplosion. TRG's Bob Lutz says Techxplosion has typically drawn about 350 people, and the new event in 2005 attracted about 150. Fusion is described as "a conference designed to unify pastors, ministers of music, musicians, vocalists, tech directors, and technicians."
Techxplosion is coming up at Calvary Chapel in Melbourne, Fla., Oct. 21-22. TRG has opted to hold these events in churches rather than hotels or convention centers for budgeting reasons. Lutz says, "The cost of a hotel or convention facility is out of line with our pricing structure, which is geared toward attracting church techs and volunteers with little or no budget."
Economy and convenience are also key for Churchmedia.net, which sends its one-day Church Media Seminars to church locations around the country. Seminars are scheduled this fall in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, and San Antonio.
So whether the road beckons or staying near home sounds better, church media practitioners have no shortage of education and networking opportunities.
Installation News
Four white DS-8s were installed near the altar
D.A.S. for Saint Andrews Church
Saint Andrews Church can be found in the Australian city of Walkerville. The D.A.S. sound system for this church was installed by the Australia-based BSS Sound and Lighting. The required systems were supplied by D.A.S. distributor for Australia Magna Systems & Engineering.
Chosen by BSS Sound and Lighting for the system upgrade were the Factor and Dynamics series products. Four white DS-8s were installed near the altar along with four white Factor 5s for the sides of the aisles. The Factor products were elected thanks to their compact size, great sound, and white color option.
The church congregation is very pleased with the new system. Besides reliability and good looks, they also have intelligibility, a must for houses of worship, where the message needs to reach the whole audience area.
Interior of the East 91st Christian Church, Indianapolis, designed by Chip Sams of Williams Sams Acoustics Inc. who installed a combination of Sound Physics Labs SPL-runts and B-DEAP loudspeakers to improve the church's contemporary worship services.
Sound Physics Labs Speakers Team with Lectrosonics Wireless
Tracing its roots to 1924, East 91st Christian Church in Indianapolis has emerged as one of Indiana's most noteworthy houses of worship. That reputation has been aided by the sheer size of the sanctuary itself, built large enough to house the largest Schantz pipe organ in the Hoosier State.
With size come problems, though, particularly as the church has worked to get in step with the changing times. Like many other churches, East 91st has sought to introduce more contemporary services into the mix in a bid to stay as relevant as possible to the sight- and sound-savvy younger generation. Unfortunately, for all its grandiose size, the facility leaves a lot to be desired as a sound hall, complicating the church's quest to improve its contemporary worship services.
That was the reality that greeted the church's incoming creative programming minister, Don Smith, and the sound expert he consulted early last year, Chip Sams, principal consultant at William Sams Acoustics, Orlando, Fla. On seeing the facility, Sams concurred with Smith's assessment that the building was an "acoustical and systems nightmare." Nevertheless, Sams accepted the challenge.
"The task was to adapt an enormous, reverberant room, built to house what I'm told is one of the largest pipe organs in the state, to facilitate contemporary music services," Sams says. "Some attempts had been made in the past to upgrade the sound system, but many were clearly not well-advised."
Working within the acoustical constraints of the facility, which couldn't be sufficiently remedied with architectural redesign or acoustical treatments, Sams developed a multi-faceted solution based on retaining and correcting adjustments to all components of the system that were still viable for the next few years, while replacing those that were never appropriate to begin with. From a new console to new speakers and amplifiers to a new wireless microphone system, the church received an audio facelift without a major architectural renovation.
Not surprisingly, powerful and adaptable loudspeakers from Sound Physics Labs, located in Glenview, Ill., ended up playing a central role in making the venue more hospitable to the needs of contemporary worship. Specifically, Sound Physics B-DEAP 32 bass speakers, deployed on the ground in two arrays of two each, proved to be an elegant answer to vexing low-frequency acoustic problems that were inherent in the architecture.
"Prior to the B-DEAPs, omni-directional vented box subs had been placed upstage of nearly all microphones and produced a very muddy bass rumble," Sams says, noting they merely excited the room's reverberance and provided little direct sound.
Since cost, structural, and sightline restrictions precluded the preferred solution of a flown directional bass array, a creative solution had to be found within the constraints of available ground space near the platform.
"The best arrangement we were able to come up with was to use the most directional ground-based array possible, and set them up to be deployed by volunteers in the 15-minute changeover between traditional and contemporary services," he says. "The B-DEAP 32 was truly the only bass speaker on the market capable of fulfilling all of our needs for a shallow, but wide, footprint and reference quality sub-bass and mid-bass from the same enclosure. It has sufficient pattern control to noticeably diminish excitation of the room volume above and behind the platform, while covering as many seats within critical distance as possible." Now, most of the audience can clearly make out bass guitar melody lines and a kick drum has the punch it needs.
The SPL-Runt, another Sound Physics product, provided a worthwhile upgrade for a pair of flown balcony delay speakers, which were capable of sounding good in a small room, but could not sufficiently control sound dispersion at mid-range frequencies to succeed in a large, reverberant space.
"A pair of the Runts provided a significant improvement in direct-to-reflected energy ratio in the balcony seating area, while also dramatically reducing the amount of sonic bleed back into the main seating area," Sams says. The Runts, he says, have no performance rival in an enclosure of its size and weight.
In addition to the main sanctuary, Sams also addressed a different set of audio problems in a renovation of another facility that houses overflow from the main sanctuary. There, Sams specified Sound Physics B-DEAP-R subwoofers. "Down-firing on low stands, the B-DEAP-R's produce a much tighter and deeper low-frequency sound in this much more intimate space," he says.
Although much of Sams' work was loudspeaker-related, he also took on the challenge of moving the church to an entirely new wireless microphone platform. Although East 91st had already been using an assortment of wireless systems, the church had a pressing need for both additional mics and a solution that would provide a standard that would make future wireless system growth easier to accommodate.
Sams took the opportunity to start with a clean wireless slate, selecting the Lectrosonics Venue system, a Digital Hybrid Wireless platform that combines 24-bit digital audio with an analog FM link for audio quality and operating range that surpass leading analog wireless systems.
The initial Lectrosonics package purchased by the church included the Venue receiver system, which uses a host assembly with an antenna multi-coupler, computer communications interface, and mechanical mounting for six receiver modules. For transmitters, Sams specified six UM400 belt-pack units with Countryman E6 ear-clip microphones.
"The church's wireless situation gave us an opportunity to standardize all of the church's bodypack systems on an emerging technology that considerably outperforms anything short of esoteric units costing several times as much per channel," Sams says.
Among the benefits the church will get from the Venue system is an absence of RF dropouts and elimination of compandor circuit noise via Lectrosonics' proprietary Digital Hybrid Wireless audio.
Relatively new to the market, the Lectrosonics Venue system was essentially beta tested at the church. Having been in operation for several months, Sams says it's worked so well that the church is eyeing the possibility of adding Venue systems for more wireless needs across its campus.
"With a far more robust RF platform than I've seen in most live sound applications, the Venue system should serve the church well for many years to come," he says.
Product News
Alcons QR36 leaves the factory
After a very successful launch at the Frankfurt Prolight + Sound, Alcons is now shipping the first product of its Q-series: the QR36.
The Q-series scalable ribbon-array columns represent a new type of product and can popularly be seen as a "cross-over product" of a traditional point-source loudspeaker and a J-curved line array system. The series has been designed as solution to obtain excellent coverage and ultimate intelligibility over longer distances in acoustically challenging environments.
Applications range from stand- or truss-mounted, single-unit mobile PA system up to multiple-module flown array in reverberant halls or high-ceiling theaters. But also as high-power, side-fill stage monitoring, the QR36 offers new solutions, or as single-column main PA system in low-ceiling applications, where a J-curved line-array will not give satisfactory throw/dispersion results.
The QR36 is a two-way, passive-filtered, modular, line-source column. With a length of 39in. (1 meter), the QR36 consists of six 6.5in. woofers in frontal bass reflex-loading and two units of Alcons' RBN1801 18in. pro-ribbon transducers with patented "Real-90" horizontal dispersion. The frequency response is 74Hz to 20kHz.(+/-3dB), with a lowest usable frequency of 53Hz (-10dB). Power handling is 780W RMS, bringing 129dB continuous output, while the 6000W peak power handling from 1kHz up, offers a 150dB virtually infinite headroom.
As an array of line sources, a QR system acts as true cylindrical radiator, offering a 3dB SPL drop-off per doubling of distance (in the near field or Fresnel zone). This brings significant advantages in SPL coverage and (intelligibility) throw, from a relatively simple system. When used in multiples, the QRs form a continuous line source, extending the near field of the system over longer distance and lower frequencies.
The specific spacing of the sources (within half of wavelength) and the unprecedented frontal radiation of more than 92 percent make the QR36 compliant with the two most important (and most difficult to realize) line-array criteria. The result is a very large main lobe without any significant spike above and below the array, preventing ceiling reflections and offering unusually high gain-before-feedback.
The main component of the QR36 is the truly unique RBN1801 pro-ribbon driver, an 18in. flat-Isophase ribbon-driver with previously unknown efficiency (110dB) and enormous system peak power handling of 3000W. Besides the physical behavior of the RBN1801 driver, the famous ribbon-known transient response and flat impedance (completely resistive amp load) offer a sound experience that surpasses high-end HiFi standards.
The RBN1801 is mounted on a 90-degree HempHorn, but is also available with 120-degree dispersion for ultra-wide coverage.
The Signal Integrity Sensing pre-wiring ensures complete cable/connector compensation between QR36 and ALC controller-amplifier, regardless of length. In this way, the ALC can be loaded down to 2Ω without any sacrifice on response quality.
As with all Alcons cabinets, the QR36 system is finished in Durotect scratch-resistant coating.
For more information, please visit www.alconsaudio.com or www.cylindricalradiator.com.
Hall Research Technologies Inc. Adds to its Line of Creative Video Switchers and Splitters
The Hall Research Technologies CP-200 is a versatile dual-purpose unit that can function as either a video splitter (one in and two out) or a switcher (two in and one out). Its mode of operation is set via a convenient front panel button. The device is compatible with analog Component Video (YCbCr or YPbPr) and RGB (sync-on-green) signals. It supports all RGB, TV, and HDTV resolutions up to 1080i. The CP-200 features three BNC connectors per channel and comes with RCA-to-BNC adapters for all connections allowing the use of either three BNC or three RCA cables.
Features:
- Dual-purpose unit; can work as a splitter or as a switch
- Perfect for high-quality video
- Supports all resolutions including 720p and 1080i
- LED indicators
- Compact and economical
- Installs in minutes
- Includes BNC-to-RCA adapters to allow use of either cable
- Universal power supply included.
Cool-stack II Cooling for Large Racks
Active Thermal Management announced Cool-stack II, a 2RU hot-air exhaust system. With six 4.8in. (120mm) fans and an 18in. depth, the Cool-stack II has the power—and the reach—to pull up to 130CFM of hot air out of tightly packed racks while generating very low noise levels.
"Cool-stack II builds on the success of Cool-stack, but is designed to provide flexible solutions for larger racks and larger heat loads," says Frank Federman, ATM president.
Cool-stack II has a total of three temperature-controlled speeds, and is installer-programmed to switch between any two speeds as rack temperature changes. Programming can satisfy the requirements of both consumer and commercial installations; in either case, heated air can be expelled through the perforated front panel or through ports on the top or rear panels. Tubings and fittings are supplied with each Cool-stack II to channel exhausted hot air from its top and rear exhaust ports to nearby closets, attics, utility rooms, etc.
Available now, Cool-stack II has a suggested retail price of $650.
For more information, please visit www.activethermal.com.
Upcoming Events
Syn-Aud-Con Would Like to Remind Everyone It Will be Offering Two Seminars in Kansas City, Mo.
The new and revised seminars for 2005 have been a big success. Our evaluations have been at their all time best! Pat and I could not be more excited about presenting the seminars to you. Here are the details:
Sound Reinforcement for Operators: Aug. 22-23, 2005 (Monday-Tuesday) $500
Sound Reinforcement for Technicians: Aug. 24-25, 2005 (Wednesday-Thursday) $600
Take both Sound Reinforcement for Operators and Technicians: $1,050
For traveling details, click on this link: Kansas City, Mo.
Helpful Links
Course Agendas
Seminar Pricing
Instructor
CEU Information
Leader in Education
2005 Brochure
Fall Schedule Information
Sound Reinforcement for Operators and Sound Reinforcement for Technicians
Each seminar lasts two days and they are held back-to-back.
Aug. 22-25, 2005 - Kansas City, Mo.
Oct. 17-20, 2005 - Secaucus, N.J.
Nov. 7-10, 2005 - ETS-LDI Show in Orlando, Fla.
Sound Reinforcement for Operators seminar addresses the subjects that are essential for operating a sound system. This is a basic course, and the emphasis is on practical rather than theoretical, using real-world explanations of potentially complex subjects. Multimedia demonstrations drive the point home and convey a level of understanding that will help head off problems before they occur. The system operator is a vital part of the signal chain. Price: $500
Sound Reinforcement for Technicians seminar is for those who install, configure, and calibrate sound reinforcement systems. It covers the theory behind how systems work and demonstrates how to use instrumentation to look "under the hood" to troubleshoot systems. This technician-level course is for those who already know the basics of operation, but want to dig further into how systems work and how to fix them when they don't. Price: $600
Take both Sound Reinforcement for Operators and Technicians: $1050
Sound Reinforcement for Designers
Sept. 19-22, 2005 - Salt Lake City
Sound Reinforcement for Designers seminar integrates the art and science of room acoustics, measurement, and sound system design. The first two days cover the measurement and prediction of the acoustical performance of the enclosed space. Days three and four are devoted to a Sound System Design process that is based on the room's acoustics. This course integrates room acoustics, acoustical measurement, and system design into a single course that bonds them together in a practical, meaningful way. It is also a valuable course for anyone who owns an acoustic measurement system and wants to learn how to get good room data in an accurate and efficient way. Price: $1,100
