BELMONT, NC — South Point Baptist Church’s revamped 700-seat sanctuary includes a new sound system designed and installed by Russ Moore, owner of Hames Pro (Greenville, NC).
The rectangular sanctuary has two-story cathedral ceilings and a raised semi-circular platform for the altar, choir and band. Pew seating fans out from the platform and fills the lower level.
The redesign extended the original rear balcony to cover the length of the side walls, creating a U-shaped balcony. The original altar area was also converted to provide additional seating.
“To provide coverage to all of the seating areas without worrying about overlap, we decided to create a system the provided sound to separate levels,” said Moore.
He added that Tannoy QFlex 16 digitally steerable, multi-channel array loudspeakers proved a good fit with the needs of the project.
“Because QFlex loudspeakers provide a way to control all aspects of their coverage, I could easily use two QFlex 16 loudspeakers for the ground level.”
Along with their eight 3-inch low frequency and eight 1-inch high frequency drivers, designed for up to 94 dB at 110 feet, Moore was able to use of Tannoy’s BeamEngine GUI to set specific parameters for each loudspeaker’s coverage.
“The back wall had the potential to be an acoustic problem since it was one big, flat surface,” noted Moore. “We found we could get maximum left-right coverage from the two loudspeakers and we were able to decay the signal at the back of the room so it wouldn’t bounce off the wall.”
Moore also found Tannoy i7s to be a good solution for the challenge of covering the U-shaped balcony and expanded seating area where the altar had been. (Tannoy i7s are tall and slim, with four 4-inch, low-frequency direct radiating drive units and one 1-inch titanium dome tweeter arranged as a line source.)
Moore also used two Renkus-Heinz CFX12S 12-inch subwoofers beneath the stage. Two Renkus-Heinz SGX8 8-inch monitors provide monitoring onstage while two more CFS8 8-inch monitors are wall-mounted for the choir.
An existing 24-channel Allen & Heath GL2400 digital mixing console resides at a new FOH position located in the “crows nest” at the back of the rear balcony. Instead of running 400 feet of new analog wiring, a Roland digital snake was put into service.
“The cost was similar to running analog snake, but with the benefits of digital, it made perfect sense,” said Moore. “As a matter of fact, when we ran the original conduit, we ran additional Cat-5 cable in case they wanted to add another digital snake in the future. It works so well they are planning on doing exactly that later this year.”
A Rane RA-27 real time analyzer and Smaart acoustic test and measurement software were used to dial in and pink noise the system before it went live.
A Lab.gruppen C Series 5:4X amplifier, located in a confessional-turned-rack room, powers the Di5DCs and i7 boxes. The rack includes a Rane digital signal processor for delay and EQ supplemental and two Rane auto mixers controlling the microphones and CD player.
To provide easy on/off of the system, there is a Lyntek PD510-4 sequenced power system with the on/off panel located outside the locked rack room.
“All in all, it worked out just as we wanted,” Moore said, summing things up. “Every seat in the sanctuary is covered without any bleeding or overlap.”
