
Dallas, TX (July 15, 2025)—While the concept of live immersive sound often brings to mind large entertainment venues, one of the most intriguing uses of the emerging field is houses of worship—and Dallas, Texas’ Watermark Community Church proves the point easily. The nondenominational evangelical congregation hosts more than 9,000 people weekly, so when it was time to update the site’s audio system, Alpharetta, GA-based integration company Clark advised the church to go with an L-Acoustics L-ISA Hyperreal Sound setup with L Series loudspeakers.
Watermark is all about communicating with its congregation, as the church’s nearly 100-foot-wide video wall made up of more than 1,000 half-meter-square LED tiles easily illustrates. Supporting the visual impact now is a L-Acoustics L Series P.A. tied to L-ISA. The main Scene system is comprised of five arrays of one L2 over one L2D, while four Extension arrays to the far left and right are made up of Kiva II, with eight enclosures per hang closer to the Scene system and seven enclosures per hang further out. Arrays of 10 Kara II each provide out-fill, with low-end coming from a center deployment of 10 KS28 subs flown in two hangs of five KS28 in cardioid mode.
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Supplementing that are 17 X8 enclosures used for spatial front-fill, while three KS21i subs per side are mounted into the face of the stage to supplement the room’s low end. Arrays of two A15i Wide per side provide extreme left and right over-balcony delay, while a dozen X8 serve as under-balcony delays. The entire system is powered and processed by 16 LA7.16i amplified controllers and three LA12X. These are driven via Milan-AVB with L-Acoustics LS10 switches, while an L-ISA Processor II with a 64-output license is driven over MADI from the church’s SSL L350 Plus FOH console.
Operationally, L-ISA is controlled via either an external L-ISA Controller display or directly from a touchscreen of the SSL house desk. “Some of our operators prefer to use the L-ISA software interface, while others use the integrated L-ISA page on the console, so it comes down to preference, but the integration has been seamless,” says Hudson Horsley, the church’s systems engineer. “At first, I think it can be a little bit intimidating, but once people hear it and get used to working with it, it’s quite easy and intuitive. It has simplified the workflow, with less effects in the chain, by using the room engine.”
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“While I think most people don’t really understand what a spatial system does, they do know that it sounds clear and amazing, which is what we were shooting for,” says Bekah Winans, Watermark Community Church’s audio director.