When decision-makers at Trussville Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) needed to improve the church’s audio system, they brought in Mike Hedden, president of dB Audio and Video (Gainesville, Ga.) to determine a quick fix to the “fundamentally flawed speaker layout and design.”
His solution for covering the audience area of the 1,800-seat sanctuary employed a pair of Sound Physics Labs SPL-trik loudspeakers positioned on a catwalk side-by-side in the center, complemented by a pair of SPL-Runt speakers serving as delays and positioned to the left and right of the center triks. Another pair of SPL-Runts, mounted on the backside of the catwalk, was deployed as choir monitors, solving an acute problem that plagued the old system. “With the old system, the choir could never hear anything,” Hedden said. “The church was convinced that it was just their tough luck because of the design of the room and that it could never be solved. But the pair of Runts in the exact locations of the old loudspeakers dramatically increased intelligibility for the choir.”
A third SPL-Runt was installed as a delay for the elevated mixing position in the balcony, which was covered with fill Frasier CAT599 loudspeakers. A pair of SPL B-DEAP 32 subwoofers mounted under the stage rounded out install.
“The SPL four-way system gave them the bandwidth they didn’t have with the previous system’s two-way design and supplemental subwoofer, as well as increased intelligibility and coverage,” Hedden said. “The new system sounds good top to bottom, and that’s due to the pattern control of the SPL-triks. The old system, which represents a very common approach to two-way loudspeakers, lost pattern control between 2,000 and 3,000 Hz, which hurt intelligibility, but the triks maintain pattern control down to 300 Hz.”
For more information on SPL, visit www.spl-usa.com. For more information on dB Audio and Video, visit www.dbasi.com/.
