TRINITY, FLORIDA – JANUARY 2013: Like many churches, Hope United Methodist Church in Trinity, Florida limped along for many years with an aging sound reinforcement system. As components died, well-intentioned church members replaced them with purchases from the music shop, and things slowly drifted toward poor intelligibility and dissatisfying musical impact. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a series of channel failures on the old analog FOH mixer. They could no longer deal with all of their inputs, never mind the quality of everything downstream from the mixer! Hope United hired Christian Sound Installations (CSI) to start from scratch, and the integrator designed and installed a first-rate sound system that includes Ashly Audio processing and amplification and Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers, subwoofers, and stage monitors.
“Like most mid-sized churches in the current economic climate, Hope United needed to stick to a strict budget,” said Paul Garner, CSI’s owner and chief designer. “Of course, it’s my job to bring the system in at or under budget, but I’m not willing to do that by sacrificing quality, performance, or reliability. Because ultimately, the work reflects on CSI, and no one makes allowances for the budgetary constraints we were working under. They either hear a good system, or they hear a bad system.” Part of CSI’s cost-saving plan for the 450-seat sanctuary was to forgo the acoustical treatments that the church thought was necessary to increase intelligibility. With conventional loudspeakers, they would have been correct, but by using the exceptionally tight pattern control of Danley loudspeakers, Garner was able to keep energy off the walls.
Everything in Hope United’s sound reinforcement system is new. The stage has six Sennheiser G3 wireless microphone systems, a ClearSonic drum shield, and an Aviom personal monitoring system for the drummer. A cutting edge Allen & Heath GLD-series digital console gives the operator the flexibility of a modern digital system with the intuitive feel of a classic analog console. CSI recessed the equipment rack into the wall adjacent to the mixer, and the back of the rack is accessible from a nearby closet. A Tascam hard drive recorder lets the church easily record all of the sermons for easy uploading to the church website.
An Ashly Protea 3.6SP processor provides all input and output conditioning for the new sound system. “I’ve had great success with the entire Ashly processor line,” said Garner. “The bang for the buck I get with the 3.6SP and 4.8SP can’t be beat. For a straightforward installation, they have everything I need, without heaps of stuff I don’t need. Importantly, the audio path and algorithms are clean and natural sounding.” In addition to providing crossovers, limiting, and overall EQ, Garner used the Ashly 3.6SP to signal align the house system with the stage monitors.
Two Danley SH-100s are arrayed roughly twelve feet off the center of the church angled slightly down and out, with a single Danley TH-212 subwoofer covering all of the seats. Two Danley SM-100M low-profile loudspeakers serve as ultra-high-fidelity stage monitors. With an EASE model, Garner determined that the Danley pattern control would yield the most even coverage of all the viable alternatives, but hearing a Danley system sealed the deal. “I brought the client down to my church, where we run a Danley system,” said Garner. “The clarity and impact is so obviously beyond what a conventional system can deliver. They were convinced.”
Three Ashly KLR-2000 amplifiers power the Danley boxes. “The Ashly KLR-Series sounds excellent and has proven to be perfectly reliable,” said Garner. “We’ve put a lot of them in and had zero failures, zero callbacks, and no issues whatsoever. That means a lot in today’s market. It’s nice to deal with companies like Ashly and Danley that recognize that there’s still something to be said for quality while still working hard to keep costs in line.”
ABOUT ASHLY AUDIO Ashly Audio Inc. is recognized as a world leader in the design and manufacturing of high quality & high performance signal processing equipment and power amplification for use in the commercial sound contracting and professional audio markets. The 37-year old company is headquartered in Webster, New York U.S.A. www.ashly.com
ABOUT DANLEY SOUND LABS Danley Sound Labs is the exclusive home of Tom Danley, one of the most innovative loudspeaker designers in the industry today and recognized worldwide as a pioneer for “outside the box” thinking in professional audio technology. www.danleysoundlabs.com
