Fresno, Calif.-based Michael Garrison Associates (MGA), a design-build systems contracting firm that has served the church market for nearly 30 years, installed its first L-Acoustics system at the new 110,000-square-foot Calvary Church (formerly Calvary Temple) in Irving, Texas.
Under the direction of MGA senior systems designer Brian Roggow from the firm’s satellite office in Springfield, Miss., twin arrays, each comprising 10 L-Acoustics dV-DOSC cabinets and three dV-SUBs, were flown above the left and right sides of the stage in the 1,500-seat main sanctuary. For low-frequency reinforcement, four SB218 subwoofers have been positioned up in the room’s center cavity while two SB118s are located under the stage. Four additional coaxial MTD108a systems are further called upon to deliver frontfill, and all loudspeaker systems are powered by L-Acoustics’ LA Series amplifiers.
“Our initial system design for Calvary Temple featured a more traditional trapezoidal type of enclosure that would have been concealed behind the soffit,” recalls Roggow. “However, during the building construction phase, several people from the church visited Angelus Temple in L.A, which has a full dV-DOSC rig, and they decided that they wanted a similarly aggressive concert-style system to better accommodate their contemporary worship band.”
“We threw MGA a real curve with our 11th-hour decision to upgrade the loudspeaker system,” says Kerry Jones, executive pastor at Calvary Church, “but they responded with sincere willingness and enthusiasm to accommodate our desires. We witnessed their rather substantial effort to quickly redesign the system and supply this new equipment with very short notice.”
Michael Garrison, owner of MGA, comments on the support they received from L-Acoustics: “We could not have pulled this off without Paul Freudenberg’s invaluable help. I called him late one day upon completing our computer modeling to request a factory review of our design work. I was overwhelmed by his willingness to actually meet me at the job site the next day. So, with less than 12-hours’ notice, he was on an airplane to meet me in Dallas. And once the plan was approved, Paul executed a Herculean effort to get the product delivered on time.”
Roggow adds, “After getting everything installed and angled correctly, we found the loudspeakers to be extremely precise in their directivity and remarkably consistent in terms of coverage throughout the sanctuary. The system also has very good gain-before-feedback and rear rejection of the stage, which is critical because the pastor often walks down the front of the sanctuary wearing a Countryman E6 microphone while the band is performing and he obviously needs his voice to be intelligible above the music. That was one of the biggest challenges we were tasked with, but this system handles it very well.
“The Calvary Church system came out very nice and we were all really impressed with the dV-DOSC’s wave guide, which is wide, accurate and very pleasing to the ear,” Roggow concludes. “These speakers do everything that they’re touted to do and are truly a ‘for-real’ product. After seeing how well dV-DOSC performed, we’re all very anxious to use L-Acoustics’ new KUDO™ system, which seems like it will be an ideal solution for several projects that we have coming up.”
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