EDMONTON, Alberta – Allstar Show Industries recently completed a design/build installation for Beulah Ministries in Edmonton on both their main and satellite campus. Dwayne Plishka, project manager, is also the technical director for the ministry.
The 85-year-old church is in its third building, an auditorium that seats 1,400 with an average weekly attendance of over 2,000. A rental facility serves as its new Whitemud satellite campus, which has a congregation of 100 and seating 250.
A NEXO demonstration sold church leadership on a new system for 98A, the main auditorium. Plishka recommended a NEXO GEO S8 system with six boxes per side for the main auditorium system, four NEXO CD12s and an NX242 processor.
"We wanted a sound image that was as true to the source as possible, and met the physical and acoustical properties of the sanctuary," Plishka said. Challenges included the shape of the room and load restrictions.
The NEXO GEO S8, a passive, lightweight system, could be suspended off a single cable at a single point, eliminating a need to redesign the structural points within the auditoriums existing façade.
"The install was completed in one week, due in part to the accurate prediction of the modeling and the light weight of the system," Plishka said. "It's amazing what we heard; the coherency is so precise. Church leadership immediately noticed a change in the sound."
Plishka added that the ministry needed a console with a minimal learning curve for the benefit of church volunteers. Allstar installed a Yamaha M7CL-48 digital console in the main auditorium, as well as secondary auditoriums in the 98A facility.
The main campus has also been equipped with a Yamaha LS9-32 console in the Children's Ministry. where Allstar installed four Yamaha IF2108 Installation Series speakers. A LS9-16 was installed in the chapel, and the green room/rehearsal space houses a Yamaha 01V96.
Yamaha LS9 consoles were also installed in the satellite location, Plishka said. "We wanted one operational learning curve for volunteers, and the Yamaha digital audio console family was the perfect fit. The youngest audio tech is 13 years old and can navigate the LS9 with ease."
The congregation noticed a difference in the sound delivered by the new gear right away, Pliska added.
"Each Sunday, there is a certain elderly woman who would pick up a hearing assist device the church provides. The first Sunday the system was installed, the woman was late to services and didn't have time to pick up the device. At the end of the service, she stopped by the front of house console and said not only was she late to service but she forgot her hearing aids as well. With a big smile she said, ‘Today was the first day I heard the sermon without any assistance.'"
At the Whitemud satellite campus, in addition to the Yamaha LS9-32, Allstar installed NEXO PS15 and PS8 loudspeakers and a 4×1 NXAmp.
"The Whitemud location is a rental facility that involves a flight of stairs," Pliska noted. "We not only needed a system that was highly efficient, passive, and would meet the room requirements, but lightweight in order to be packed away in cases and carried up the flight of stairs each week."
The PS series with the built-in processor requires minimal equalization and is an easy set up for the volunteers, Plishka said, adding that the NEXO/Yamaha combination maintains continuity between both campuses, yet is "easily stored between services."
"There is no easy way to completely satisfy the diverse needs of any congregation, but Allstar's approach to common operating systems, common learning curves, and the added benefit of some redundancy built into the overall system is working really well for us on the support side," said Worship & Arts Minister, Reverend Terry Lee.
"On the delivery side, we have fewer complaints about mix and even volume issues, in part because we're delivering outstanding fidelity every weekend," Lee added. "Our singers and band members are keen to serve when they've been in the pew the week before and hear it sounding really good. This is added encouragement to bring their best because they are being supported and reinforced so well. All in all, the new Yamaha/NEXO system has been an outstanding solution for us."
For more information, please visit www.allstar-show.com and www.yamahaca.com .
