From its initial count of 200 congregants 15 years ago, the Ephrata Community Church in Pennsylvania has grown to welcome more than 1,600 today and from one service each weekend to four. To accommodate its greater needs, the church sought funds to build a new sanctuary and called in local AVL integration firm Clair Solutions to design and install its audio system.
Clair Solutions’ relationship with the church began with a small video project many years ago, with Clair Solutions Engineering Manager Seth Morth coordinate the purchase. ‘They appreciated our command of the technology and the way we worked with the people who will operate it, as well as our transparency and forthrightness,’ says Morth, who also led the new sanctuary project.
Because they were involved early, the Clair Solutions team were able to offer insights and suggestions based on thousands of successful projects and overcoming innumerable problems, complications and constraints. ‘We’ve worked with Cornerstone Design, the architectural firm on the project, on other installations so we already had a good working relationship,’ explains Snior Lighting Designer, Bill Simmons. ‘We spent a lot of time early on working with the church and the architects to optimise room shape, the technical systems, the acoustics, and so on.
‘Our on-staff acoustician, Justin Graybill, modified wall positions and construction materials to improve the audio intelligibility and impact at its source. When there were options, we took the church’s decision-makers to nearby facilities that we had designed to make abstract-seeming options concrete. There are so many trade-offs in these kinds of decisions, but the church was able to make educated choices.’
The project required more than three years to completion. Because the seating capacity of the new sanctuary was constrained by available real estate and zoning laws, the Clair Solutions team also built in future-proof ways for Ephrata Community Church to expand to remote sites with high-definition audio and video feeds. That consideration, which involved some infrastructure and would not be used immediately, further complicated the design and budgeting trade-offs.
The final room shape may be best described as a squat, blunted diamond with an approximately 65ft stage at the bottom of the diamond. The church was adamant about duplicating the flat floor and removable seating of the previous sanctuary to allow for concert-style events. That said, the back does include permanent seating that rises to a second-story entrance/egress. An LCR system of rider-friendly Clair Brothers C8 and C12 line array loudspeakers cover the main floor beautifully with six additional kiT12-i delays to cover the permanent seating on the back wall. Four CS218 subwoofers round out the low end using a cardioid array that minimises low-frequency energy on the stage.
JBL Control Series loudspeakers cover all of the public areas outside of the main sanctuary, including a public café, a gathering lobby, and a game room. Lab.gruppen D-Series amplifiers with on-board Lake processing power the system and provide all loudspeaker equalisation, protection and delays, and BSS Blu-Series DSP handles system routing and logic.
An Allen & Heath SQ-7 console resides at FOH, connected via Dante to a smaller A&H SQ-5 console in a broadcast booth. The broadcast mix differs from the house mix because some aspects that are abundantly loud in or unneeded in the room (the sound of the congregation itself) need to be included in the broadcast mix and connect to the video router via Madi. High-end Genelec reference monitors and Marshall video monitors allow the Ephrata technicians to deliver broadcasts that translate well to other playback systems. Using the SQ-7 and SQ-5 gives the technicians a common interface and the ability to use an iPad for remote mixing and input monitoring.
The video system uses a Ross Video Ultrix video routing system that allows video from any source to map to any output, discretely or en masse. Moreover, church technicians can save or recall complete working states or change elements on the fly without any physical patch cables. Two Sony HD cameras capture the service, and Clair Solutions built an infrastructure to allow that number to grow as needs and/or budgets grow. Left and right IMAG projectors and screens give congregants an intimate view of the service, and there is infrastructure in place for a future centre screen. A confidence monitor/projector at the back of the room and nineteen distributed TVs round things out. All of the video signals travel via SMPTE-hybrid fibre-optic cabling.
‘We excel in exactly this kind of project: a new construction design/build,’ Morth reflects. ‘We always listen to the client’s goals and can often point out important aspects of those goals that they didn’t think about because they’re not building new stadiums, theatres, clubs, and sanctuaries all the time like we are. We know the questions to ask. Whereas other integrators may be more product-focused, we’re in it for the client. We thrive on creating environments that resonate with the client and attendees, and that we, ourselves, would be happy and proud to work in.’
‘Clair Solutions, as with everything they do, has always had a reputation for installing quality sound equipment,’ Mark Ulrich, Pastor Of Worship & Pastoral Care at Ephrata Community Church, says. ‘But for me, it was the personal nature and approach of Joe Bunting and Seth Morth that sold us on the company, as much as the Clair brand name did. In the end what we got was not only top of the line equipment, we were rewarded with a personal touch that I feel is so important.’
More: www.clairsolutions.com
