Located in Pearl, Mississippi, the Grace Primitive Baptist Church supports a close-knit community with traditional services – spoken word and song with occasional backing tracks. Its long, rectangular sanctuary can accommodate approximately 300 congregants, many of whom had difficulty understanding what was being said or sung.

A/V integration firm Sound & Communications solved these intelligibility problems with a new sound reinforcement system led by a single, unobtrusive Danley Sound Labs SM100 full-range, point source loudspeaker.

‘The old loudspeaker they had in there was original to the building, which is 17 years old,’ explains Sound & Communications solutions architect, Allen Cotton. ‘They weren’t pleased with the coverage or the clarity. As a certified Danley designer, Danley’s point source fidelity was in the back of my mind the whole time. During our visit, we learned that they were not only hopeful that their intelligibility problems could be fixed, they wanted it done in a way that had no visual impact. They wanted something that was unobtrusive.’

Cotton modelled the system using Danley Direct software: ‘They had never seen a predictive direct field model and were intrigued,’ he says. ‘I showed them the SM100’s coverage pattern at different frequencies, especially those most relevant to intelligibility. It’s a relatively small loudspeaker, but it’s big in power and would cover the space well. I told them that I knew they had tons of options for integrators and products, but here was a product that I knew would work.’

Cotton and his team installed an SM100 – that was custom painted to closely match the ceiling beam – in front of and above the centre of the stage. To save the church money, he repurposed the existing QSC amplifier and added a small Biamp processor for mild input and loudspeaker conditioning. A new Yamaha TF-series mixing console gives Grace Primitive’s A/V techs the best of digital recall with a familiar feel.

‘The installation took less than a day, and when we fired it up, the SM100 required very little EQ,’ Cotton reports. ‘The coverage is uniform since everything is coming from a single, point-source loudspeaker, and there’s no more than 3dB difference between the front and the back. Grace Primitive also got the unobtrusive visual aesthetic they were looking for – the paint- match blends in nicely.’

‘The volume we are able to get from the system before it feeds back is so good,’ adds Pastor David Pyles. ‘Everyone has been well pleased with the system.’