Nashville, TN (June 3, 2011)-—Nashville’s Cornerstone Church recently created a satellite sanctuary in Bowling Green, KY, out of an old U.S. Postal Service sorting facility.
Mixing live elements, including a band, and AV material like a taped sermon, the new venue needed an audio system that could take it on. Nashville’s Pro Audio Solutions prescribed and installed a sound system that includes an Allen & Heath iLive digital console, Crest CPX-series amplifiers, and on stage, QSC K-series powered monitors. The main PA is based around Danley loudspeakers and subwoofers.
Scott Oliver, sound designer and installer, created a sound system where once only the monotonous rhythm of mail sorting machines excited the air confined within the prefabricated metal walls. “Everything was working against us,” he said. “Metal pre-fab is the last thing you want, acoustically. Perhaps worse, we only had 10 feet above the floor to work with for a room that is 100 feet by 60 feet.” The stage was installed in the middle of one of the long walls, forcing Oliver to come up with a reinforcement solution with greater horizontal distribution than depth. At the same time, he had to prevent the system from unduly exciting the drywall-encrusted metal that formed the walls.
With that in mind, Oliver distributed four Danley SH-95 full-range boxes along the front wall, two above the sides of the stage and two more beyond those in either direction. The SH-95 delivers a 95- by 55-degree beam width. “The SH-95 was perfect for this application,” he said. “It cuts up close to the ceiling without actually exciting the ceiling, and we were able to just hit the back row, avoiding the back wall and making acoustical treatment unnecessary.”
Although Cornerstone can switch to mono if need be, Oliver gave the system a unique stereo configuration. The four SH-95s divide the room into three stereo fields. The center field is true to the left-right imaging of the stage, whereas the outside fields are flipped relative to the stage. “I like to avoid mono like, …well, like mono,” he laughed. “For this application, it’s not like the stereo image actually tracks instruments or, like in a movie, a car driving from left to right. Rather, the stereo adds excitement and dimension to the sound – think of a fat stereo organ pad or stereo chorus on a guitar rig. With the Bowling Green configuration, no one misses out on stereo information, no matter where they sit.”
Danley Sound Labs
www.danleysoundlabs.com
