Indiana’s Church of the Greater Faith is a forward-looking Pentecostal congregation whose contemporary approach to worship has seen it growing consistently – a source of both joy and challenge, and as the modest 700-seat sanctuary now hosts two Sunday morning services, with a third service added in the afternoon.
Despite efforts to improve the problematic acoustic of the room’s peaked, metal A-frame structure over the years, the resukts have actually made things worse: ‘The original system was poorly designed and underpowered to begin with, and they spent the next 11 years trying to fix it,’ says Jason Ryder, General Manager of Lake Charles, LA-based Porche Advance Systems. ‘The result was a patchwork of mis-wired, out-of-phase components, and a room with dead spots and poor, uneven coverage.’
‘They knew they ultimately needed to replace the entire system, but they had been reluctant to do so because they were looking at moving to a larger venue within the next couple of years,’ offers Porche Advance Systems owner, Jacob Porche.
The solution to the problem has come in the form of a Renkus-Heinz Varla loudspeaker system – one of the first Varia systems to be installed in the US.
‘With Varia, we were able to design an expandable, flexible system that would work for them now, and become part of their new system later,’ Porche explains. ‘When they build the new sanctuary, these three cabinets will become the bottom three cabinets in a larger, eight-cabinet array. The fact that this was an investment that could grow with them was a huge plus.’
The Varla system comprises LR arrays of three Varia cabinets each: ‘The top box has a 90° by 7° horn pattern, the middle cabinet has the transitional horn that goes from 90° to 120° wide by 15° vertical, and the bottom unit covers 22° vertical by 120° wide,’ Porche says. ‘That tapered approach enabled us to cover the entire space without resorting to EQ and processing, and to achieve a remarkably flat response from left to right. There is not a single dead spot in the entire sanctuary now.’
Ryder believes that the congregation’s response to the new system has been unconditionall good: ‘They were all singing louder and moving with the music – the energy level in the room is fantastic.’
‘One of the church’s board members came up to me after a service to thank me,’ adds Porche. ‘He said it was the first time he’d ever been able to hear every word of the sermon, and every instrument in the band.’
‘With Varia, Renkus-Heinz has developed a system that can truly adapt to any environment,’ Porche concludes. ‘The system’s variable coverage means it can work in any room, and its modular, expandable design means that it will not become obsolete once the church moves to larger quarters.’
More: www.renkus-heinz.com
