In addition to its main campus in West Melbourne, CCM operates a 1,100-seat location in Sebastian River High School's auditorium and a 1,099-seat, purpose-built sanctuary in Viera, Florida. Beginning with the commons area at its main campus, CCM has been turning to natural-sounding, well-controlled Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers and, in many cases, powerful Danley amplifiers and DSP to convey the full high-energy dynamics of its services.
"I've been impressed with Danley's philosophy and products for some time now," said CCM associate audio engineer David Hoover. "I got into pro audio via the hi-fi world of home stereos and car audio systems, and for so long I wondered why no one could deliver that kind of quality in a large-scale commercial sound system. Then Danley came along and totally changed the playing field.
"Danley's designs give my mixes depth, dynamics, and effortless output that conventional designs, including line arrays, can't touch. CCM senior audio engineer Caleb Luper has described our new Danley systems as having a wall removed between the source instrument and the listeners. Music and spoken word sound real and full of life, and Danley's even-response across the coverage pattern makes every seat include an incredible experience."
CCM's Danley conversion began with the 80ft x 80ft commons area outside its main campus sanctuary. Hoover designed a powerful system composed of four Danley SM-60F loudspeakers, one each in each of the room's four quadrants. They fire straight down so that any reflections get absorbed by the ceiling tiles. Although the SM-60F puts out respectable bass on its own, Hoover gave the system abundant low end with a single Danley DBH-218 subwoofer flown in the center of the room. Three SH-Micros and an SBH-10 cover the balcony areas with no spillover. Sufficiently impressed, he purchased a pair of Danley SM-80s for his personal outreach system.
"The leadership loved the new commons area sound, but they're understandably skeptical about claims that company X has made a better mousetrap that we need to buy right away!" Hoover said. "The turning point was one day when I had my own SM-80s up in the main campus sanctuary.
"Although they have tremendous output, the SM-80s are very small, and Luper [our supervisor] came in and rolled his eyes at me. He said, 'alright, let's hear what they can do.' So I fired them up and the output was so huge relative to their size that he thought I was playing out of the sanctuary's installed system. He said, 'I know what our system sounds like; let's hear those little Danleys!' I told him that he was hearing those little Danleys and his jaw dropped. That opened up the leadership's eyes - and ears - to Danley's synergy horn technology."
(Jim Evans)
