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May 2012

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Eagle Christian Church, Eagle, Idaho

Volunteer church technical team installs new concert-ready audio, video and lighting system.

by Deidra Blackmore

The conventional wisdom is that good things come to those who wait. Perhaps a more apt way of putting it, with regard to the technical systems at Eagle Christian Church in Eagle, Idaho, is that even better things come to those who work diligently over the course of a long period of time in pursuit of excellence.

AAtronics, a full-service systems integrator with headquarters in nearby Boise, collaborated with church technical personnel in developing audio, video and lighting systems for the new 1,450-seat sanctuary. Rik Halsteen of AAtronics held dual roles, serving as the company's project manager as well as, one of the church's primary system techs. "This project really benefited from Rik's direct experiences with the church, where he could act as a seamless conduit merging his ideas as a system tech who's there for every service with his experience and knowledge from a career in developing high-end systems," explains Joe Colley of AAtronics, a veteran systems consultant who worked closely with Halsteen. "It was a rare opportunity and a big plus."

The worship sanctuary is the lynchpin of a new 41,000-square-foot building project for Eagle Christian Church that also includes offices, classrooms and common areas. It more than doubles the space of the rapidly growing church, which was founded just over a decade ago and now hosts more than 2,000 people weekly for services.

The new larger facility reduces demand on church staff thanks to fewer services and the updated technology gives those services an improved professional quality. In addition to supporting weekly services, lighting and sound were designed with the intent of hosting live concerts without the need for additional rented equipment.

The new room features a modern design, with approximately 1,000 theater-style seats fanning outward from the large front platform, and a balcony with another 400-plus seats running along the back wall. During the building design phase that kicked off more than two years ago, Colley performed extensive EASE modeling to gain a thorough understanding of how sound would react in the proposed space. EASE is a software-based design program that helps predict the performance of a sound system in a given venue. This analysis also led to collaboration with Auralex, a manufacturer of acoustical treatments, to develop acoustical panels that were applied to certain regions, such as the flat surfaces behind the balcony that could have reflected too much energy back into the primary sound coverage zone.

"It's a large room with a lot of hard surfaces, and that can work in opposition to high speech intelligibility and coherent music presentation if you're not careful," says Colley. "Another thing that's proven helpful is that some of the side walls were originally supposed to be flat concrete, but were changed to rough-hewn brick instead. This breaks up reflections to a surprising degree, and overall, the room sounds quite good." Overall acoustics were also aided by placing the drums in a Perdue Acoustics Model LSSDBK Isolating Drum Booth.

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