Georgia church upgrades sound with Danley
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Although it met the church's needs when it went in 15 years ago, the sanctuary's sound reinforcement system was straining under the weight of the more contemporary demands placed upon it by the shift in service style. FFBC hired Gainesville, Georgia-based dB Integrations – the same company that had designed and installed the older system – to update its 500-seat sanctuary with a new Danley-based sound system that could simultaneously deliver excellent spoken-word intelligibility and exciting musicality.
"We did Fayetteville First Baptist Church's previous sound reinforcement system when I first started at dB Integrations 15 years ago," said Neil Philpott, sales consultant at dB Integrations. "We designed that system for a multi-purpose room because, like many churches, they hoped to build a dedicated sanctuary. But that never ended up happening and so the 'multi-purpose room' became the permanent worship space."
He continued, "With their new emphasis on blended worship, they wanted a system with greater dynamics, better intelligibility, and more enveloping musicality. Their production director, Luke Drewry had attended several of our education seminars and understood the dimensions along which their previous system was falling short. Other firms suggested line array solutions, but in the years since I first worked with FFBC, Danley Sound Labs came into existence. Danley's patented technologies offer vastly better performance than line arrays: better pattern control, better phase coherence, and better intelligibility and musicality overall."
To offer proof of concept, dB Integrations arranged a demo of the major components Philpott proposed for FFBC. They placed a Danley SH-96 point-source loudspeaker and two Danley TH-115 subwoofers on a lift and covered 75% of the room. "It sounded awesome, and by the time we got back to the office from the demo, they were calling to say, 'Let's do it!'," Philpott said.
The now-installed system uses a single Danley SH-96 to cover the majority of the room, augmented by a Danley SH-95 for down-fill and two Danley SM-60s for side-fill. In addition, the church purchased a pair of Danley TH-115 subwoofers a few years ago. Philpott and his team removed them from the organ niche where they had been placed and mounted them on the ceiling in the middle of the room, coupled to provide more efficient directivity. Crown XTi-Series amplifiers power the system, and a BiAmp Nexia handles signal processing.
(Jim Evans)
