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Media Production Coordinator Tyler Roberts (left) and freelance audio engineer John Petrarca collaborated with Morris Light and Sound of Nashville, Tenn., on their new audio, video and lighting systems.
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"It's a traditional hall with stained glass windows, organ pipes and a choir loft," says Tyler Roberts. "But we desperately needed an audio system that would give us the sound quality and power to present a contemporary service.’'
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But for the blended and contemporary services, the south central Pennsylvania church relies on 21st century technology like their new Yamaha CL5 digital audio console. "Digital audio opens the doors for us to find new ways to grow," says media production coordinator, Tyler Roberts.
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The new sound systems features Nexo Geo S12 line array loudspeakers.
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Choir and organ still power traditional services at King Street Church in Chambersburg, Pa.
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King Street Church, located in Chambersburg, Pa., hosts traditional, blended and contemporary services in their main sanctuary.
King Street Church has a 100-year tradition of servicing the worship needs of downtown Chambersburg, Pa. The church is proud of its heritage, as well as its ability to stay attuned to the needs of contemporary worshippers. To support a growing congregation, in recent years they've added more worship space, but also maintain a mix of contemporary, traditional and blended services in the 550-seat sanctuary. “We provide three worship styles in two venues in four services,” says King Street Church Media Production Coordinator Tyler Roberts. “Our leaders wisely decided we should be all one church but with different worship styles.” Now, with the help of a talented integrator, they are overhauling the main sanctuary with technology that will facilitate all three types of services, as well as provide a flexible digital infrastructure for the church to continue to grow.
Secular Experience Pays Off
Roberts came to the church six years ago with a solid background in both technology and business honed at his graphic design company. Because his company promoted concerts and sizable Christian music festivals for nine years, Roberts is attuned to the production issues that surround contemporary worship, but he also appreciates the challenges of doing traditional worship and seasonal productions on a large scale. “Our average attendance on Sunday is around 1,800,” he says, “and we present an 8:15 traditional service with pipe organ, piano and choir sometimes adding brass followed by a 9:45 contemporary service with a band and electronic keyboards followed by an 11:00 a.m. blended service—all in the main sanctuary. Also, at 9:45 a.m., we have a guitar-based contemporary service in our Baker Center venue [a multi-purpose room on the same campus]. The change-overs can be challenging, to say the least.” The busy church also creates a radio broadcast each Sunday and provides a streamed broadcast to a growing remote congregation on the Internet.
Roberts's background in business has helped him both organize and plan the activities of about 50 avid volunteers, 20 of whom are scheduled to support each Sunday's activities. Roberts says that having had MBA training has helped him to understand the importance of operational plans and organized training for the church. “I guess that's my thing,” he says. “… forming teams and leadership. I tend to think about the business side of things.” He maintains that standardizing operating practices and careful planning are key because of the scale of what they need to accomplish.
The concert experience Roberts gained also put him in touch with many talented production professionals, like Danny Rosenbalm, vice president of integration at Morris Light and Sound of Nashville, Tenn., who would design systems for the church's first major upgrade in more than 30 years. In addition to having experience with major touring acts like Kenny Chesney, Rosenbalm and his company have experience building digital infrastructures that allow houses of worship and corporate clients to establish digital frameworks for AV that not only provide the immediate benefits of “going digital,” but also provide a solid foundation for expanding into larger systems. This flexibility is designed to address growth at an individual location or even expansion to remote locations, campuses and broadcast. “Much of our technology today is IT-based,” says Rosenbalm. “It's a large percentage of what we do, and rightly so. Getting the digital backbone sized and configured correctly saves the client a lot of trouble in the future.”
To get on the right track, Rosenbalm coordinates “blue sky sessions” with church clients to determine where they see their ministry in 3-5 years. Then, they discuss how specific technologies can help to achieve those ministry goals. “We have a partner relationship,” he says. “I let them know that I'm not just a designer. I'm also responsible [for making] it work and training them.”
For their planning meetings and to carry the projects to completion, Roberts and the worship arts committee enlisted the help of a local freelance audio engineer and professional firefighter, John Petrarca, to act as project coordinator. Petrarca, who had been involved as a volunteer, was the ideal candidate to coordinate all the upgrade projects, and worked closely with Rosenbalm to keep the project on track.
"We provide three worship styles in two venues in four services. Our leaders wisely decided we should be all one church but with different worship styles."
Tyler Roberts
Media Production Coordinator, King Street Church, Chambersburg, PA.
Choosing AVL with an Eye Toward Aesthetics and the Future
In addition to the technical requirements to upgrade the systems at King Street Church, planning sessions focused on the church's aesthetics. “It's a traditional hall,” Roberts reports, “with stained glass windows, organ pipes and a choir loft. Those elements are all important to the traditional service, but we desperately needed an audio system that would give us the sound quality and power to present a contemporary service in the same space.” After considering other popular sound systems, the team decided on Yamaha's Nexo loudspeakers and amps to handle the audio.
Rosenbalm began his design using Nexo's design software, NS1 (built on the features of the existing GeoSoft application). This powerful simulation tool enables system designers to configure and optimize performance of any Nexo system by predicting its behavior in a venue. “We created several models of the room to match extremely traditional to contemporary settings,” says Rosenbalm. “Essentially, you input a CAD file of the room, put horizontal or vertical arrays in place with wall treatments, etc., and find the best system for the room. It's the No. 1 tool we use to configure systems.”
The new audio system design replaced a center cluster of speakers with left and right vertical arrays employing Nexo Geo S12 line array speakers. “We chose the S12 because it is a very ‘musical' box,” Rosenbalm adds. “Also, the quality of the S12 gave us the ability to use the system in passive mode, without the need to biamp. They provided the vocal clarity in spoken word and singing that we were looking for.”
Each side has four Geo S12s with a 10-degree trapezoid shape and a 30-degree shaped S12 configured for downfill. The original center cluster was replaced by two Nexo RS18 Ray subwoofers hung to dispense bass frequencies equally without hitting and resonating on the stage. Power for the system comes from two Nexo NXAMP4X4 amplifier/controllers. These amps have DSP profiles for individual Nexo speakers built in. These smart filters for specific speakers can prevent thermal overload, provide signal overload protection and other critical features. “The NXAMPs are clean and provide high output using relatively low power, which was important to meet the specifications of King Street Church's machine room,” says Rosenbalm. Signal processing is done using a Symetrix Dante-networked Radius DSP.
"… while we may be maxed out on physical space, the move to digital technology opens the doors for us to find new ways to grow."
Tyler Roberts
Media Production Coordinator, King Street Church, Chambersburg, PA.
Because the church volunteers were already familiar with the Yamaha M7 digital console, a new Yamaha CL5 digital audio console with Dante was installed at front of house with two Rio 3224-D input/output racks located behind the stage. The M7 was repurposed to the church's Baker Center venue and the move to CAT5 cabling allowed volunteers to salvage enough old copper to have a great party to celebrate the installation of the new sound system. “Our goal,” says Rosenbalm, “was to make the entire infrastructure Dante, from mic pre's through to the transducers.” Roberts also makes use of the Dante network to pull off feeds for the broadcast suite, as well as the church's second venue. In addition, he sees the new Dante infrastructure as a key element in the church's plans to bring their services to other locations in the future. “The audio upgrade, in all senses, exceeded our expectations,” says Petrarca. “It sounds great and supports all our goals at King Street Church, including future growth.” He also notes that the move to a well-designed digital network saves time, allowing more time to be devoted to the ministry and its mission.
King Street Church has also asked Rosenbalm's company to provide recommendations for an HD video upgrade that will soon connect the Baker Center venue and sanctuary with a live video feed. The church wants the ability to produce and stream HD video (including the ability to encode and decode in different resolutions) and support multiple venues. To accomplish this, the new design, yet to be installed, calls for a JVC GY-HM750U solid-state HD camera with HZ-FM15U focus control, HZ-ZS13U zoom control and a VF-HP790G 8.4-inch HD/SD studio viewfinder. In addition, two JVC GY-HM600U 1/3-inch hand-held cameras with HZ-HM600VZR remote lens control and Manfrotto MVH502A546BK fluid head tripods will be added with two additional Panasonic AW-HE60S 1/3-inch Full HD pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras and a Panasonic AW-RP50 sub-compact remote camera controller.
In addition, the church's current lighting system will be supplemented with a new Martin M1 lighting control console—while additional lighting fixtures will be added to the stage area to improve lighting for HD.
For the projection and IMAG overhaul, two new Da-Lite 78-inch by 139-inch fixed frame screens at either side of the stage will handle images from two Barco RLMW6 3-chip DLP 6,000-lumen projectors. A Ross Video C2M-224EX-48-001 Carbonite eXtreme 2M 2 M/E production switcher with two Ross Video RCP-NKM Kameleon M Series 40-button and LCD display control panels will handle video switching needs, and two Cisco SG300-10 (SRW2008-K) Gigabit Managed Ethernet Switches will provide connectivity. While the HD video equipment is high-end, Rosenbalm says they used the same criteria for its selection as they used for the audio upgrade. “The equipment we specified for this install will meet their needs today and be easily expandable for the future,” he says. “Plus, it all must be easy to program and operate, so [it's] ‘volunteer friendly.'”
In Use
Roberts, Petrarca and the worship committee are pleased with the results of the audio upgrade and are confident of its role in the future of King Street Church. “It's only the first phase of our renovations,” says Petrarca. “But it's an exciting point we've reached.” Roberts agrees. “Now, we have a system that sounds great for all of our styles of worship,” he says.
Roberts believes that with the new technology to support multiple worship styles the church will continue to grow, and his business training has him preparing for the future. “We are committed to continuing to service the downtown area where this church was founded,” he says, “and while we may be maxed out on physical space, the move to digital technology opens the doors for us to find new ways to grow.”
