Tampico, Mexico (January 8, 2024)—While it might look like a throwback to the futuristic architectural designs of the post-war era, the gorgeous domed building that houses Tampico, Mexico’s Fuente de Vida—“Fountain of Life”—church is in fact a recent worship space built on the former site of the coastal city’s Gaona bullring in 2011. While its visual appeal is undeniable, however, the site’s lack of proper sound coverage and poor intelligibility made hearing services there a challenge. Aiming to change that, the church brought in Juárez-based IM Systems and Mexico City-based Vari International to assess and rectify the problem
“Fuente de Vida’s worship hall can seat 8,000 people, but their original sound system did not have the capacity to cover the entire seating area and it really wasn’t optimal for the shape and size of the venue, which is set up in the round,” says IM Systems director Cesar Muñoz. “In addition to doing sound design, I’m also a touring audio engineer and work at my local church in Ciudad Juarez, Comunidad Olivo, where we installed a K2 system with Vari International back in 2016. I’ve been in love with their speakers ever since, and I knew that an L-Acoustics solution would be a good fit for this project as well.”
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Working closely with Vari’s system engineering team, Muñoz used Soundvision simulations in conjunction with acoustic measurements of the venue to come up with a five-array design that would deliver even distribution of sound pressure throughout the entire main floor, including the under-balcony sections. Three frontal LCR hangs, plus two rear-firing ones, are each made up of two A10i Focus flown over two A10i down, and all five clusters hang from the circular truss ring over the stage. Up in the balcony, 11 additional A10i Wide speakers were mounted to existing catwalk infrastructure to supply blanketed coverage of the entire upper seating area. A total of seven LA4X amplified controllers power and process all of the A Series enclosures.
Needing to preserve 360-degree sightlines of the church’s circular stage, the project’s subwoofer deployment presented an interesting challenge, says Muñoz. “There was no way to install subs underneath or to the sides of the stage as a normal front-facing venue would,” he describes. “We had to use a KS21i stack in the middle of what they call ‘el aro’—or ‘the ring’—which is a massive structure suspended by wires in the middle of the venue that provides support for lighting, LED screens, and audio systems. We tried several iterations using different configurations of KS21i and KS28 subwoofers, but thanks to the excellent acoustic predictions provided by Soundvision, we were able to choose the perfect solution for the venue, which was a central hang of four KS21i driven by a single LA12X. Low end is definitely no longer an issue.”
