HOLLYWOOD, CA — Hollywood United Methodist Church was built in the 1920s with a Gothic architectural design inspired by Westminster Abbey, and it has served as a backdrop for Whoopi Goldberg’s Sister Act and hundreds of scenes in other movies. But while it’s withstood all those movie shoots and California’s earthquakes, its sound system was outdated and underpowered. The six-inch speakers mounted near the bottom of the cathedral’s support columns, in fact, were barely sufficient for the choral reinforcement for which they were originally designed. Even the 70-volt systems in the smallest restaurants down the street could outdo it. When enough had finally become enough, the church’s AV tech, Dave Whittaker, requested meetings from area integrators for a Renkus-Heinz-centered system.
One of the firms he contacted was Platt Design. Their president and senior designer, Bill Platt, is a two-time Emmy winner and spent 15 years as director of audio and show development for Walt Disney’s theme parks. The staff at Platt Design had recently been introduced to the Symetrix Automix Matrix 780 when Whittaker contacted them.
The Automix Matrix 780 is one of the latest in Symetrix’ Integrator line of products for small to medium-sized installations in churches, hotels, restaurants, and the like. It includes 12 input channels, EQ, feedback elimination, dynamics, delay, automatic gain control, and either gating or gain-sharing auto mixing. Up to eight submixes are sent to the rest of the system through as many outputs.
“We almost always use SymNet DSP in our larger installations,” said Phillip Kim, director of client relations for Platt Design. “We knew that Dave had his heart set on Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers, so the important differences between our proposal and our competitors’ came in the system we built around the speakers, price and our reputation as a company. The Automix Matrix 780 came along at the right time. It has the comprehensive DSP tools that Bill needs to build a perfectly-tuned system at a price that would be hard to beat.” Cost was definitely a factor in Hollywood UMC’s decision, and Platt was awarded the contract on reputation and assurance that the system would have the utmost fidelity and functionality without a tremendous price tag.
Hollywood UMC’s sound system now benefits from eight Renkus-Heinz IC-series full-range loudspeakers mounted to optimize the combination of fidelity and preservation of the historic church’s aesthetic. A new Mackie console that was donated to the church and Yamaha choir and stage monitors let the musicians benefit from the renovation as well.
Although the Symetrix Automix Matrix 780 integrates with Symetrix’ line of ARC interface panels, Bill Platt used the unit at Hollywood UMC for “behind the scenes” work that no one at the church would ever have to concern themselves with. Taking input from the church’s existing board, the 780 performs alignment, equalization, and filtering for the speakers and monitors. In addition, it provides delay for the speakers that are located farther back in the sanctuary.
“Since this is Bill Platt, he’s never satisfied with default settings,” said Kim. “He tweaked everything.” The Automix Matrix 780 connects to a computer via Ethernet with a straightforward Windows interface providing easy and efficient setup and adjusting.
With the new system in place, Hollywood UMC is better equipped to handle its expanding range of musical styles. And it was able to achieve that improvement in fidelity and power and stay on budget.
For more information, please visit www.SymetrixAudio.com.
