As part of a major upgrade of the audio system in its church in the Warner suburb of Queensland, Australia, the Pentecostal Emerge Church has installed Powersoft’s high-performance T Series amplifiers to drive its AT Professional line arrays.

The church has three locations around North Brisbane, with Warner location as its main church. The building includes a 450-seat sanctuary, whose A/V system is key to a typical church service, which includes a full band of drums, bass guitar, electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, and between four and six singers.

The previous PA system was installed in 2000, when the Warner church opened, and comprised four 12-inch horn (point-source) cabinets (two per side) and two 18-inch subs under the stage. ‘In recent years, we noticed that the system was sounding tired and lacking the definition required for clean and clear vocal reproduction,’ says Ash Webber, one of Emerge Church’s head audio engineers, on the thinking behind the upgrade. ‘Achieving even frequency and SPL coverage throughout the auditorium has always been a challenge, and at times this led to comments from the congregation that the audio mix was too loud in some seats while being too soft or lacking clarity in others.’

Emerge Church’s last annual conference provided an opportunity to audition prospective PA and amplifier options. (An earlier audio upgrade had seen the church purchase an Allen & Heath dLive S7000 mixing console, with DM48 mix rack and Dante card, and four Electro-Voice EVU-2062 front fills to augment the original PA system). For the conference, founding director of Brisbane-based manufacturer AT Professional, Harry Lloyd-Williams, provided the company’s TLA508 Blackbird line-array system, with power supplied by Powersoft T Series amplifiers.

The combination of AT and Powersoft met the criteria for an upgraded sound system, providing even and clean coverage throughout all seating, for both music and speech reinforcement. The church leadership endorsed the system, and approved the upgrade.

The new loudspeaker set-up was tuned by Brendan Keane, and comprises eight AT Professional TLA508 line array cabinets (four per side), as well as two AT Professional CLA LF3200 18-inch subs under the stage. Both the new loudspeakers and the existing EV front fills are powered by four 6kW, four-channel Powersoft T604 amplifiers.

At Emerge Church, all signal processing is done within the T604s, which have built-in loudspeaker DSP, while input signals are delivered via the on-board Dante capability. The T Series’ high voltage is also ideal for sharing power between the channels for applications such as bi-amped loudspeakers or subwoofers with passive tops.

‘The new AT Professional PA system and Powersoft amplification combination has delivered our goal of even coverage and clear audio with exceptional results,’ says fellow head audio engineer, Rob Camilleri. ‘The system has been well received by the church leadership, congregation, worship band, audio engineers and guest speakers, and delivered increased intelligibility, musical definition and headroom.

‘We thoroughly recommend and endorse the Powersoft amplifier platform and AT Professional for their exceptional customer service and quality products.’