Rock Church's new K-array Mugello-KH2 loudspeaker system was designed and installed by RC1 Productions located in Las Vegas, Nev.
To say Rock Church’s sound system was overdue for an upgrade would be an understatement. But the full extent of the problem was not known until the old system was being disassembled. Of 19 flown loudspeakers in the old system, only one and a half were found to be fully functional.
The good news is that Rock Church, one of San Bernadino, California’s largest churches, has a new sound system that is drawing rave reviews from the congregation and the church’s tech team. The church recently installed a new sound system featuring Mugello-KH2 line array loudspeakers from K-array. The system was designed and installed by RC1 Productions based in Las Vegas, Nev.
A long list of loudspeaker manufacturers were in the running for this audio overhaul, says Darwin Tillery, the church’s audio engineer. Tillery recently joined Rock Church after serving in leadership of tech teams at three other churches in northern California. Prior to his work on church staffs, the musical and production veteran toured as FOH engineer or production manager for entertainers like New Edition, Sheila E, The Platters, Mel Tillis, Englebert Humperdink, BVD, and MC Hammer.
The wide, 3,000-seat worship center at San Bernadino's Rock Church is covered by just four loudspeakers per side thanks to the digital steering capability of K-array's Mugello-KH2 small format, powered line array system.
Tillery’s praise for the new system is exuberant. “Man, the system is unreal. At Rock Church, we have almost 3,000 seats, and it’s super wide. We were at 100 dB with 103 peaks at 71 feet, with just four boxes per side. These boxes sound much louder than they look. Everyone is just staring at them saying, ‘How are you getting it to breathe that way.’ With the full band we expected to run out of PA, and we didn’t. Nothing was harsh, we had chest thumping bass and it just works.”
As Tillery notes, Rock Church’s new K-array Mugello-KH2 small-format line system includes just four full-range boxes per side. Two K-array Thunder-KMT21 subs per side --- one flown, one on the floor --- round out the self-powered three-way system. Each KH2 includes dual eight-inch woofers and dual 1.4-inch compression drivers. The KMT21 subs each have a single 21-inch woofer.
“The way K-array crosses over from the subs is much higher than other manufacturers. It’s not what you’d expect when you’re crossing from 21-inch subs to the eight-inch drivers in the KH2’s, but the sound is seamless and more musical,” according to Tillery.
“We’re also going green by saving on power,” he adds. “The previous system required 14 30-amp circuits. The first week with the new system we ran with one 20-amp circuit per side.” The church has since added another 20-amp circuit per side since the breakers are old and potentially unreliable.
But as much as Tillery praises the K-array system, he has this advice for other churches. “Don’t buy a box base on what another church has. Dig into the specs and features that fit your unique situation.” Tillery says he and his team made the choice for K-array over the others for several reasons. “None of the others had the digital steering,” he says. “Also, with K-array we were able to go with the smallest loudspeaker hang to preserve our sight lines to our side projection screens. Fewer boxes saved lots of money, and we saved on weight, so less rigging was required. There was no structural engineering either, since the new system was a fraction of the weight of our previous system.”
As part of the new installation, RC1 Productions, led by owner Rick Camp, also designed a Dante digital audio network to route audio to other parts of the building for the flexibility do virtual soundchecks and for multi-track recording. However, in an interesting twist that Tillery chocks up to years of production experience on the road, he added a parallel AES network between the mixer at front-of house and the powered K-array loudspeakers. Tillery says this was designed to avoid the routers on the Dante network, and reduce potential points of failure.
