PORT ORCHARD, WA – The Christian Life Center (CLC), which has served the Port Orchard community for more than 80 years, has grown to include a variety of events in its multi-purpose worship space. After bringing in Rose Media for a look at a possible video upgrade, church officials opted instead to first focus their resources on improving the audio system.
"Clarity of sound and not being able to hear was becoming an issue during services," noted Chad Rose of Rose Media, "so audio quickly rose to the forefront as the priority when funds became available."
In addition to their own worship services, which draw 700 to 800 each week, CLS hosts praise concerts and old-fashioned hymn nights plus community events such as their regular August Cruisin' Sunday car show and food drive. Other events at CLC include police awards ceremonies and pageants, dinners and guest speakers.
As it turned out, the systems Rose specified for the CLC did include some video upgrades, but Rose's primary focus was a comprehensive overhaul of the audio infrastructure in the CLC's main auditorium and the installation of a system featuring key components by Tannoy and Lab.gruppen.
"The room is a big rectangular box with lots of reflective surfaces," Rose said, adding that no acoustic treatments were installed when it was first built. "Even when you don't have the sound on and you're just talking to someone, the room is very live – so to find a speaker system that could perform well in there was challenging."
So was finding a place to put them. "There aren't many rigging points in the ceiling – it's not designed to support external weight." Rose called in the structural engineer who had worked on the original construction to source out just where they could hang the speakers.
"We kind of knew what we wanted based on other churches," said CLC media director Larry Rubio, who has been volunteering at the church for the past 25 years. "We wanted to get away from the mono sound of the previous system and to reach the corners of the sanctuary. To have good sound throughout, rather than in just one section."
Rose specified Tannoy VQNET 60s for the project. They were up to the challenge and met other goals as well, including the need to make lower stage volumes possible for performers and to make it easier for the church crew to reconfigure the system for different applications.
But, first and foremost, the church officials required dramatically improved intelligibility and coverage. "That's why Tannoy was chosen. It had the most accurate coverage and was still intelligible at a high SPL."
Rose opted for a design that differed sharply from the previous setup. "The original system was a mono cluster and didn't include any low end support," he noted. "Also, the side seating sections of the room weren't covered by the system, so by putting in an expanded LCR system we were able to get more coverage on the sides and provide a little bit of a stereo field."
The mains consist of four Tannoy VQNET 60s – two mounted in the center of the stage directly in front of the auditorium's wooden proscenium, and one 15-feet to each side of that center cluster, just above the edges of the roughly 40-by-26-foot stage.
"For optimum coverage of the side seating sections, the system is configured in stereo and utilizes cross matrixed, delayed feeds of the left and right channels in the center cluster," Rose explained.
Low frequency reinforcement is provided by four OAP Audio TR-218 dual 18-inch subs flown to the left and right of the outer Tannoy VQNET 60s, placed just above the church's two video screens. "Tannoy would have been our first choice," said Rose, noting that the choice of the OAP product was motivated purely by budget considerations.
Control over the mains, and over eight Aviom personal monitor stations onstage, is provided by a Yamaha M7CL 48 Channel Digital Console with an Aviom card installed. An additional Yamaha O1V console in the facility's dedicated broadcast booth is also connected to the front of house console.
DSP is provided via the VQNET 60's onboard signal processing. "The whole system is on VNET," Rose said. "There's a VNET controller for the subs and a VNET interface at front of house. So for ongoing maintenance you can just plug into the USB port, log on and change settings."
One Lab.gruppen C Series C 88:4 amplifier is located in the same pre-existing 40-space rack as the VNET Controller and powers the passive subs. With the Lab.gruppen gear, however, that rack looks far emptier than it once did. "The old system had a total of nine amps for the center cluster – so we went from nine amps to one that puts out 2100 Watts per sub. With the system being largely self-powered, it worked well to have one single amplifier that can perform like two or three.
"It also worked well to have the tight pattern of the VQ speakers," Rose added. While he'd heard good things about the boxes from friends prior to specifying them, before deciding on Tannoy Rose tried several other products in EASE models. "We tried a couple of line array options, but line arrays wouldn't have performed well in the space. Also I'd have to have a really wide array to cover the room, and then we'd be getting a lot of reflections off the side walls."
Rose also credited the compact Tannoy VQNET 60s for putting out more SPL with fewer boxes. "As far as modeling goes, they performed a lot better than the other options and the price point was also good compared to other products. They really perform like a line array in a box. It's amazing how accurate and precise the coverage is."
Beyond that, Rose said, "The system really fun to listen to music on. Once we got it in the air I dialed it in, sat and listened – just by myself – and they sound really nice, like studio monitors."
While playing Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," Rose said "I'd never noticed that there's this whole telephone conversation at the beginning. I'd just never heard it, but it goes through the whole introduction and it was like ‘wow, that's actually there'. The same experience I've had with studio monitors."
The church members and staff are also satisfied with the system. "It's a big difference from where we came from," said Rubio.
For more information, please visit www.tannoy.com.
