When Pinelake Church opened the Reservoir Campus in Brandon, Miss., in 2003, the church originally had a traditional, full choir and orchestra worship style. Since then, the church has transitioned to a more contemporary style of worship, which pointed out weaknesses and the age of the current sound system. These weaknesses created a road block to the overall effectiveness of services.
“The sound system that was built in 2003 was not adequate for what we are doing now” says Kevin Hoober, Director of Worship Technology at Pinelake. “Over the course of five years, we were discussing what the new PA would look like." They hired InteRise of Nashville, Tenn.
When church staff sat down with the integrator to discuss the new sound system, a variety of options from different manufacturers were on the table. One of the main challenges to overcome was the low ceiling inside of the building. There was a huge challenge with sight-lines because the roof is so low relative to the size of the room and seating sections, so they needed a solution that created quality audio coverage across the room but also did not obstruct the visual space. Ultimately d&b Soundscape rose to the top of list because it checked so many boxes.
Many of Pinelake’s other campuses and facilities have d&b sound systems so leaders at the church were familiar with the company's products. Before the project began, a 3D measurement of the space was taken with a Leica BLK360 image lazering scanner to produce renderings to show what the new sound system would look like in the space. The d&b Soundscape system gives Pinelake tools to mix audio into the room to create an engaging experience while removing distractions created by traditional speaker systems, so the message is clear.
The d&b En-Scene software enables object-based mixing and positioning designed to create an authentic acoustic reality. It locates and tracks each individual sound object; harmonizing what is seen and heard to bring together what belongs together or pushing them far apart, while the d&b En-Space software modifies reverberation signatures to transform the acoustics of any space.
“Soundscape in this application at Pinelake brings the benefit of being able to mix with space and size that’s compelling to the audience while representing every seat in the house equally which we refer to as object-based mixing,” explains Nick Malgieri, d&b Support Team Member. “This allows the sound engineer to place objects in space and then the sound system re-renders these objects, so everyone hears the sound with proper localization to where the performers are on stage.”
Pinelake has stayed consistent when deploying Yamaha consoles at each of their six campuses. To increase workflow efficiency while mixing, the Yamaha Rivage PM7 console was selected to drive the d&b Soundscape system as the higher channel and bus count allowed more flexibility while mixing the audio.
“With the new system the band sounds amazing and the vocals are easy to understand. That’s so important in worship music to be able to hear the lyrics and sing along and the same thing is true for the message,” says Hoober. “The soundscape system gives us all of those things wrapped up together.”
