Created in 2015 by the merger of two churches, worship at South Carolina’s Hope Church ranges from high-energy music to spoken word sermons, with a recent enlargement of its Simpsonville campus providing the opportunity to upgrade its audio system with components that include Alcons Audio pro-ribbon loudspeakers.
The expansion of the single-story Simpsonville building enlarged the room’s depth by about 70 feet and added gallery seating at the back, providing a total of 700 seats. The existing audio system was not adequate to cover the newly enlarged space quality sound for all styles of worship, so the church contacted AVL Solutions (AVLS), based in nearby Greenville, for help.
“A challenge for the sound design was the pitched roof, which ranges from 15 feet at the sides to more than 18 feet in the center,” says Chris Craine, AVLS designer/director of sales. “We discussed the benefits of Alcons pro-ribbon audio technology with the client and, having worked with them before, they were happy to trust our recommendation.”
AVLS installed an Alcons pro-ribbon system comprising left-center-right arrays of two single 12-inch RR12 point-loudspeakers at each side and four in the center to provide the congregation with a full stereo image. Three horizontally-mounted VR12 mid-size monitors are suspended from the building’s main overhead beam to cover the new gallery seating, with three SR9 compact in-fill monitors for altar lip fills. The church’s existing subwoofers were tied into the new system, with Sentinel10 (4 x 2500 watts) and Sentinel3 (4 x 750 watts) amplified loudspeaker controllers installed for audio power and system management.
“This was the first time we had installed RR12s and the deployment was extremely easy. We simulated the system through EASE and it performed exactly as expected,” Craine notes. Church technical advisor Trey Moran adds, “We considered both distributed and line array approaches. The hybrid approach suggested by AVLS, working with our existing subs, turned out to be a winning combination. And there is no shortage of power from the Sentinel amplified loudspeaker controllers.
“We are very happy with the result,” he concludes. “Our front of house engineer is covered by the main array to feel connected with the room, while just one row behind is evenly covered by the VR12 delays. The control is amazing and the intelligibility of the pro-ribbon is just what we needed. We are excited to consider Alcons and AVLS as the preferred choice for our future campus locations.”