The four-year wait is over for Dallas’ Watermark Community Church, with the completion of its move to a new 3,500-seat main sanctuary. Leavig behind a smaller interim worship centre, the church called on Acoustic Dimensions for consultation and Clair Brothers Audio Systems to install the specified L-Acoustics Kudo loudspeaker system..

With the old space being transformed into a two-storey children’s building, the 12-element Kudo system installed there were moved into Watermark’s new sanctuary and expanded to offer left and right arrays of eight Kudo flanked by LF arrays comprised of six SB28 enclosures. To the outside of the subs on both sides are three additional Kudo cabinets flown in a horizontal configuration to address the outer areas of the wide fan-shaped seating area. Five mini-arrays – each featuring three Kivas – are flown above the balcony for delay, while a pair of coaxial 12XT enclosures targets the far corner balcony areas. A combined total of 19 LA8 amplified controllers power all systems.

‘One of the primary reasons we stayed with Kudo was simply that the church was extremely happy with how the former system sounded,’ says Acoustic Dimensions Senior Consultant VP Robert Rose. ‘From a coverage and output standpoint, everybody was very pleased, so there was no reason to change. Plus, we had originally designed the system four years ago with scalability in mind knowing that we could move it to the permanent space and add a few more enclosures as needed.’

Rose, who served as the project manager, points out that the church’s only criticism of the previous room’s PA stemmed from where a few discrete seating sections had been addressed with conventional fill speakers from another manufacturer: ‘It was somewhat obvious when you’d transition out of Kudo’s pattern to the other boxes’,’ he says. ‘So this time we made sure to use L-Acoustics systems to cover as much of the room as possible.

‘For example, the new sanctuary is bordered by catslides that connect the main floor seating section to the balcony. On each side of the main PA, we hung horizontal arrays of Kudo to cover those areas, which worked out really well. It tonally matched up much better with the mains this time. Plus, Kudo’s adjustable louvers really helped us extend the coverage down front and keep a much tighter push up to the top.’

Rose credits Acoustic Dimensions’ Casey Sherred as responsible for all of the audio design work and SoundVision modeling, schematics, and final tuning of the system: ‘Casey worked very closely with the architect and came up with a very effective solution for an acoustically difficult environment with a lot of highly reflective wooden surfaces. Even though we technically gained over a thousand seats in the new space, the design and gear we used helped preserve the intimacy and presence that made the previous room an engaging place.’