While many churches are using repurposed premises, the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles occupies purpose-built premises. Looking forward, it recently called in CCI Solutions to design and install a new L-Acoustics set-up.
Built in 1927 and modelled on the Palace of Ducal in Italy, the landmark building is reminiscent of a European cathedral – deep and narrow with 60-ft ceilings. ‘It’s a cavernous space and really multi-use for a church,’ confirms CCI Solutions’ Duke DeJong.’ It is almost like a convention centre that the church owns and meets in. The main congregation doesn’t fill the auditorium, but they rent the space out to other larger congregations. So when we took on the job, there were multiple sound systems cobbled together to cover the range of uses. The goal was to have one good, clean system that could handle anything they threw at it.’
In addition to services for a number of congregations, the building is used as a shooting location for film and TV. ‘Given the movie and TV uses, the sound system also had to be low profile – Kiva fit the bill perfectly,’ DeJong says.
Systems from a number of manufacturers were considered, but were found wanting in both profile and cost. The chosen set-up is based around Kiva and X Series enclosures. ‘We’ve really fallen in love with L-Acoustics products over the last four or five years,’ DeJong continues. ‘They make some really great sounding speakers and they’re both very high-quality and cost-effective, which for church installs is a big issue.’
Another concern for installers and crews working in houses of worship is intelligibility, a spoken word is key to a church’s mission: ‘All of the L-Acoustics systems we use, including Kiva, have a great warmth-to-articulation ratio,’ says DeJong. ‘You can’t go into a church environment with a really aggressively voiced system. Spoken word and music have to co-exist without either sounding flabby or harsh, and the Kiva strikes a really nice balance between warmth and articulation.’
Ease of use and installation was another important consideration: ‘Installation has the potential to be a monstrous task in a room of this size,’ says Todd Gathany, CCI Solutions’ project lead for the installation. ‘Even with the extremely high ceilings and hard-to-reach locations for the fills, rigging the speakers went smoothly.’
The system uses a single central, seven-enclosure Kiva array with two flown SB15s, and SB28 subs on the floor, plus X8 coaxial enclosures fill. Initially, its size looked like it might prove to be an issue with some audiences.
‘The home congregation was fine, but the others were more sceptical when they saw the size of the array,’ Gathany confirms. ‘But you could actually see the attitude change as they began to push the system. They kept asking our people if they could turn it up more until they got it to a point where they said they didn’t want to go any louder for their services. When they were assured that they still had plenty of headroom and the system was not being pushed, they were as sold as we are on Kiva.’
