Renkus-Heinz reports that the Church of the Greater Faith, a Pentecostal congregation with 700-seat sanctuary in New Albany, Ind., has recently upgraded its sound system to the company’s Varia Series Modular Point Source Array—a build-to-order system, and one of the first such installations in the U.S. Jason Ryder, general manager of Porche Advance Systems in Lake Charles, La., explains that the church’s peaked, metal A-frame structure has long suffered from challenging acoustics.
“Their original system was poorly designed and underpowered to begin with,” says Ryder, “and they spent the next 11 years trying to fix it. The end result was a patchwork of miswired, out-of-phase components, and a room with dead spots and really poor, uneven coverage everywhere.”
“They knew they ultimately needed to replace the entire system, but they had been reluctant to do so because they were looking at moving to a larger venue within the next couple of years,” adds Porche Advance Systems owner Jacob Porche. “But with Varia, we were able to design an expandable, flexible system that would work for them now, and become part of their new system later. When they build the new sanctuary, these three cabinets will become the bottom three cabinets in a larger, eight-cabinet array. The fact that this was an investment that could grow with them was a huge plus.”
The new Varia system comprises left and right arrays, each with three Varia cabinets. “The top box has a 90-by-7 degree horn pattern; the middle cabinet has the transitional horn that goes from 90 to 120 degrees wide by 15 degrees vertical; and the bottom unit covers 22 degrees vertical by 120 degrees wide,” says Porche. “That tapered approach enabled us to cover the entire space without resorting to EQ and processing, and to achieve a remarkably flat response from left to right. There is not a single dead spot in the entire sanctuary now.”
Ryder says the congregation has been “singing louder and moving with the music. The energy level in the room was fantastic.”
Porche adds, “One of the church’s board members came up to me after a service to thank me. He said it was the first time he’d ever been able to hear every word of the sermon, and every instrument in the band.”
“With Varia, Renkus-Heinz has developed a system that can truly adapt to any environment,” Porche concludes. “The system’s variable coverage means it can work in any room, and its modular, expandable design means that the system will not become obsolete once the church moves to larger quarters.”
Find more information about Renkus-Heinz Varia Modular Point Source Array.
Visit Porche Advance Systems at porcheinc.com.
