Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee, Wis., has been a staple in the city for many years and owned the facility on the north side of the city for many of those years. The building, however, was landlocked with another church sharing the rest of the block and as a result, the church had nowhere to expand as it grew. When an opportunity to purchase a central-city church complex, including traditional auditorium, school and administration buildings, church leaders jumped at the opportunity. Sven Pro guided the church with design and installation of audiovisual equipment through the extensive renovation.
Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church has a dynamic, charismatic worship service consisting of traditional and modern gospel music, choir, and preaching. Music and sound quality are both important for church members in allowing for a distraction-free worship environment. A high-quality audio system was requested. Sven Pro representatives say the auditorium has a high, vaulted reverberant space with an arched and domed ceiling over 60' tall with cement walls, making a highly directional speaker system imperative. The church wanted to preserve and improve on the architecture as much as possible, asking for an architecturally pleasing speaker system as well.
Sven Pro reps say the sound quality paired with a competitive price-point made the Passio line from German speaker manufacturer, Kling & Freitag, rise above the other options. The speaker system design consists of four colored-matched Passio full-range speakers in sets of two with delay rings along with four color-matched Passio Sub 15 subwoofers for maximum bass impact for the program material. “The Passio are compact high-performance loudspeakers with a dual 5” woofer design that maximizes surface area in cabinet size and directivity. In fact, the speaker design has won several international design awards over the years it has been in production. The speaker is small and is hardly noticeable on the walls of the auditorium. It also provides the directivity necessary in the reverberant space. The PASSIO SUB 15 subwoofer is a single 15” long excursion subwoofer in a small compact size. The entire system is powered by three Lab.Gruppen IPD2400 digital amplifiers providing limiting and equalization to the system,” according to Sven Pro’s press release.
Church members were reported to be apprehensive at first about the sound based on the size of the speakers, but were quickly reassured when they heard them. The church has a choir, bass, keyboards and a high-end Roland electronic drum set.
Other portions of the audio system included Tannoy speakers driven by additional Lab.Gruppen amplifiers for overflow areas and a Midas digital mixer and stage boxes to provide audio routing and mixing.
