EAW gives Purpose Church 180-degree coverage
- Details
After the church decided to upgrade the 25-year-old system, Peter Wilson, audio tech director for Purpose Church, and Jeremy Rynders, audio/acoustic system designer, began to research their options.
The fan-shaped church sanctuary, with seating for 1,800-2,000, features a wrap-around balcony that necessitates 180-degree coverage. And, because the space is made up primarily of hard, flat surfaces – with little or no acoustic treatment – the room would benefit from sound reinforcement with custom-tailored coverage, easily defined by the user. Lastly, the church was interested in a system with the ability to vary the coverage, ideally with pre-sets that simplify the process.
“The room is wider than it is deep and features a stage with a band/orchestra space in front of it,” explains Wilson. “We hoped to put in a system that could easily adapt from full room coverage, to just main seating without the balcony or even dial it in smaller for more intimate events. Anna does all of that and more.”
Rynders ultimately specified a left-centre-right system with the left and right arrays made up of two columns – one with six Anna modules and the other with three. The centre cluster consists of two Anna columns, each three high. A total of 24 Anna modules are in use. Anna’s 100-degree horizontal dispersion was paramount to providing the coverage the seating area required.
“The system is a true left-right-centre system with each array creating a custom shaped 180-degree horizontal coverage pattern,” adds Rynders. “EAW’s Resolution software is used to change the Adaptive coverage patterns for different seating requirements and for different services. All of the vocals and spoken word go through the centre, which covers the entire room. Left and right are music – true stereo from farthest left to farthest right.”
Rynders and Wilson worked closely with EAW’s Application Engineering team to build the church model in Resolution and create the custom pre-sets that would allow the church team to easily use the system for a variety of applications/seating configurations.
(Jim Evans)
