A new location for Peak City Church in Colorado Springs, CO has been equipped with a distributed audio system for the lobby/cafe and common-space hallway areas as well as multi-use classrooms that were developed by AV systems integrator Sight+Sound Technologies utilizing LEA Professional power amplifiers.
The common areas of the church often carry the audio of services or other programs happening in the main auditorium, but they may also have background music, announcements, or their own audio as needed. The three multi-purpose classroom systems are primarily independent and are used to support group-specific programs or video support.
“We put in place five LEA Connect Series 704D four-channel amplifiers — two supporting the distributed audio and three more amps, one in each of the classrooms,” explains Kris Johnson, chief operating officer for Sight+Sound Technologies (SST, based in Colorado Springs). “We did their whole distributed audio through the lobby and in the hallways with the LEA amps. All their sound systems are now on the same Dante network so that we can distribute the sound anywhere we want, which is a very nice growth feature for the church.”
The LEA Professional Connect Series 704D amplifier is a family of Dante-ready, IoT-enabled amplifiers suited for small to medium-scale installations, offering direct HiZ (70- or 100-volt) or LoZ, selectable by channel. Installers can engage the built-in WiFi access point, connect to the venue’s WiFi, or use the FAST Ethernet to connect to any local area network via Cat5 or Cat6 cable. Units also include analog inputs and Dante inputs and external I/O control for remote on/off and fault monitoring.
“The 704D is one of our favorite amps; we keep a couple of them on the shelf because they always come up as a great fit for projects,” says Johnson. “The wattage and features of the 704D are a good fit for the variety of different speaker systems we use. We’ve hooked LEA amps up with Martin Audio, EAW, Bose and other speaker brands, and we always get great-sounding results.”
The Peak City Church distributed system is also making use of the DSP functions of the 704D amps, including a routable input matrix, crossovers, parametric EQ, output delay, limiting and more. In addition, they’re connected through the LEA Cloud platform for remote service and support.
“It’s really refreshing to have a single-rack-space amp that has good power, and a lot of network features behind it, and all at a great price — other single-rack-space amp brands are just not very economical for us for most applications,” Johnson concludes. “LEA amps are feature-rich, rugged, and affordable; that’s what we love about it. We have a hotel project coming up, and we will most likely specify several LEA amps; I’m looking forward to working on that project and working more with LEA Professional.”