ARLINGTON, VA – Part of a $9.6 million renovation and expansion at Cherrydale Baptist Church was an upgrade to the audio system. Following a design from Miller, Beam & Paganelli, Baltimore-based Design & Integration Inc. installed one Tannoy VQ 100, a pair of VS 15HL subwoofers and nine V8s for reinforcement within the main sanctuary, and 12 Tannoy CVS 6 in-ceiling speakers plus five iW 6DS in-walls for other areas of the church.
"Sound is the most important thing we do," noted Tim McGhee, Cherrydale Baptist Church's technology and facilities manager, backing up that assertion with a passage from Romans 10:17: "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Along with the spoken word, the church, founded in 1913, needed subtle enhancement of its Allen Digital Organ and praise bands, which often include a full rhythm section and multiple vocalists.
The renovation and expansion project, launched in 2003, was part of "The Imagine Campaign," conceived as a way to house the additional people the church was going to serve as it tried to grow through its outreach campaign.
Completed in April 2010, just in time for Easter services, the build was no small task, noted Ralph James, project manager of the campaign and a member of the Cherrydale congregation since 1947.
"We took our previous sanctuary and knocked out both side walls. We bumped one side out 15 feet and enlarged the seating for the main floor and the balcony and put in a broadcast booth behind that. And on the other side we bumped it out 35 feet to make room for a new stage, the baptistery and changing rooms."
Given the extent their musical program, Cherrydale's primary goals were to achieve maximum intelligibility and comprehensive coverage throughout the expanded 580-capacity sanctuary, as well as in various other areas attached to it. But the overall look of the sanctuary was also a dominant concern, said John Rossman, project manager for Design & Integration Inc., who first became involved in the project in August 2009. "Aesthetics were a very high priority from the inception of the project and from the architect on down. They didn't want to see any of the AV equipment, so the speakers had to be as small as possible so that they wouldn't be obtrusive."
The idea was to improve on not only the sound of the previous sanctuary, but to disguise the audio infrastructure entirely, creating a solution that offered high-impact sound quality but a very low-impact visual footprint. Correspondingly, the system designed by Miller, Beam & Paganelli was to be compact, but powerful.
McGhee and Rossman cited another priority: the ability to reconfigure the space easily for weddings and other functions.
Previously, there had been only one mix position on the upper balcony, McGhee noted. Regardless of the function the sanctuary was being used for, "we wanted the sound mixer to be able to get an accurate picture of what people in the congregation were hearing."
To do so, Cherrydale asked that the design make the provision for two additional mix positions, one on each side of the main congregation area. To simplify the process of reconfiguring the room, an Aphex Systems Digital Snake was specified.
"With the Aphex Anaconda we're able to transmit sixty-four channels of audio over optical cabling, so whenever the user wants to switch mix locations they don't have to plug in 32 mic inputs and thirty-two mix outputs, they just have to plug in two fiber optic cables," said Rossman.
DSP is provided via the Ashley digital amplifiers used to power the Tannoy loudspeakers and two Yamaha LS9 32 consoles – one located in the main sanctuary and one in the broadcast booth/control room behind the upper balcony.
A graphics and video projection system was also installed and includes a Sony robotic camera, Sanyo PDG-DHT 100L projector and an 8-by-14-inch Hurley screen located above the altar's baptismal fount.
Reflections in the space are minimized by carpeting, upholstered pews and seats and 700 square feet of 2-inch Novawall acoustic treatments installed on the rear and side walls of the sanctuary.
In the sanctuary, the single Tannoy VQ 100 is mounted discreetly in a keystone-shaped centerpiece at the top of a custom-built proscenium.
"It has a very wide dispersion pattern from one single point source, so we were able to install that one speaker and cover most of the congregation," said Rossman. Also mounted in the proscenium and flanking the VQ to the right and left are Tannoy's VS 15HL subwoofers to provide low-end reinforcement throughout the entire space.
The V8s, Rossman continued, are installed on the front wall to either side of the proscenium and act as fill speakers for the main congregation area. Two additional V8s are installed to either side of the stage as side fills, while others ensure consistent coverage on and below Cherrydale's expanded balcony – two located above the balcony proper, and three more in the ceiling of the under balcony.
The Tannoy speakers are mounted flush with the surface of walls and ceilings and covered in a decorative, acoustically transparent fabric designed to make them blend into the architectural details of the room. The Dual Concentric driver equipped Tannoy V8s offer similar benefits to the VQ 100 in terms of power, clarity and size, said Rossman, but they also made the general contractor's job easier. "They were actually installed in little cubbies in a brick wall that had to be drilled out, so I'm sure that he appreciated that they were a smaller box."
Despite the expansion, Cherrydale's services still sometimes attract more people than the sanctuary can hold. There are three Tannoy CVS 6s located in the main foyer and three are installed in the church's glass enclosed cry room. Three more CVS 6s are split between a separate meeting room and classroom. Additionally, five Tannoy iW 6DS in-walls are installed in the Narthex.
All components located outside the sanctuary are time-aligned back to the main system to provide consistent sound for anyone moving in and out of the sanctuary during services.
Blair Parker, a senior consultant at Miller, Beam & Paganelli, and the acoustic and AV designer on the project, credited the VQ Series for "really good pattern control, and the line is very consistent in terms of the tonal quality all the way from the V6 up to the VQ Series. Also the Tannoy are relatively transparent – whatever you put into them is what you get out – and in my experience, if you have a flat, transparent system you can get more gain before feedback out of the system." Here, he added, "there's gain for days."
Perhaps, for Ralph James' ears, a little more than he would prefer. "They run it at about 92dB, which is louder than I'm comfortable with," James said, laughing.
For more information, please visit www.tannoy.com.
