While just a toddler in human terms, Lithopolis, Ohio's Crossroads Church has seen significant change in its six years of existence. One of its most recent changes was moving out of a leased store-front meeting space into an abandoned Methodist church building.
"The building came with 21 acres on a highly travelled road. This was a total God thing because at the time, we averaged about 85 people [in attendance] and the possibility of buying such a large piece of land with a completely furnished building seemed impossible," states Bobby Sykes, creative arts director for Crossroads Church.
With the 21 acres and building came some challenges, however. Built in the 1970s, the building had not been updated since. "It even had an eight-track tape player in the closed off balcony sound booth," Sykes recalls. The existing sound system was torn out, and Crossroads' system from their previous store-front space was brought in. It was a better system than what came with the building, but it brought to light some other problems.
"The facility we purchased was a sound nightmare," exclaims Joe Miller, worship pastor at Crossroads Church. "Not only were the mid-range frequencies reflective and ugly, but it was a room that also hated the 100-125 Hz frequency range. We put sound dampeners on the walls and it helped control the mids, but the lows were brutal. So much so, that we actually could not use a kick drum mic."
"We also found that the system we had, though it worked well in our old facility, was incredibly inefficient in the new, larger space," Miller continues. "Coupled with the fact that the main cabinets were almost 48 inches tall and we have a low ceiling, we were unable to get the sound above people's heads. This resulted in slamming the people in the front row at about 105 dB just to get 89 dB in the back row."
With the sound challenges as severe as they were, it wasn't long before Crossroads began exploring a solution to their problems. And choosing the right person to guide them on this journey was a straightforward process.
"[Matt Price, owner and head consultant of Sound Inspiration LLC in Columbus, Ohio] helped us early on in many ways," says Miller, "whether it was consulting in small gear purchases or contracting him to run our special live events. When it came time to make a huge design change and gear overhaul, Matt was an easy call to make."
The new audio system needed to handle Crossroad's progressive rock music style, but needed to be compact to deal with the facility's low ceiling heights. It also needed to provide even sound coverage throughout the room.
Price, specializing in the design of sound reinforcement systems for houses of worship, brought his passion for helping churches to bear on Crossroads' problems. With a ceiling height at the outer walls being around nine feet, loudspeaker cabinet size and configuration would be a limiting factor.
For their audio needs, Price and the church turned to Peavey and their Versarray line array solution. One of the features of the Versarray loudspeakers that the church was attracted to is the use of ribbon drivers to handle the high end, instead of the usual compression drivers found in most speaker cabinets.
"Considering the room height and seating configuration, people located in the first couple rows are in a prime position to get their ears ripped off," describes Price. "Therefore, special consideration had to be put into making sure the worship experience would not be a painful one, and we knew that the smooth response of the ribbon drivers in the Versarray 112 boxes would be more than up to the challenge. The Versarrays are also noticeably more natural when it comes to speech reinforcement. I am very impressed with the clarity that the Versarray system provides."
Price continues, "For subwoofers, we installed a pair of Electro-Voice QRx 218s subs. On the amplification front, we've got a QSC PLX1104 feeding the ribbons, a Crown Macrotech MA-5002VZ powering the mids, and a QSC PL380 powering the subs."
Other sound equipment includes a dbx Driverack for digital signal processing, including system EQ and crossover handling. The church retained their Allen & Heath GL2800 audio console for use with the new system.
To keep overall costs within the $40,000 budget, Crossroads chose to self-install the system with guidance from Price. Great care was taken to insure a safe and professional installation.
"Our tech/design crew consists of several people with construction and engineering backgrounds that helped us with the initial design," comments Sykes. "From there, we essentially over-engineered everything based on theatrical guidelines to insure against failure."
The audio system isn't the only technical system that received attention. Lighting was also an issue, and the church tackled a lighting system redesign at the same time. Sykes, fascinated with lighting since childhood, took on the task of designing the lighting system himself.
"I haven't had any formal training but lighting design has been a passion of mine for some time and I've gleaned ideas from many sources," says Sykes. "With our limited budget, hiring a consultant would have meant we'd have to eliminate a good portion of our fixture list. Plus, we're all about training ourselves and our volunteers to be able to maintain our equipment. This was a relatively small project, so we decided to use it as a learning experience."
The lighting problems that Sykes sought to solve included uneven lighting across the platform, creative limitations from their 24 PAR64 fixture lighting system, and excessive heat put off by the fixtures. "We had the air-conditioning full-on in the winter and still couldn't control the heat," states Sykes.
For the new lighting rig, Sykes turned to automated fixtures and low-energy technology.
"We ended up going with mostly LED-based fixtures not only for their minimal power consumption but also for the low amount of heat, if any, they put off," Sykes says. He chose Chauvet ColorDash Battens and LEDRain LED fixtures as his primary lighting tools.
"For their small size and price, the output of the ColorDash Battens is just outstanding. They out-performed LED fixtures that were three times their price as far as output goes, and the variable color temperatures on the whites made them very flexible. Also, the ability to separate the ColorDash Battens fixture into four "blocks" allows us to do some sweet chases across the wall with them. One of our LD's created a chase with the vertical mounted ColorDash Battens to make them look like volume level meters. We currently have them mounted in a pattern on the stage wall facing the crowd and eight of them fill the whole room with color and double as blinders."
Sykes describes the rest of the lighting equipment choices he made. "Our Elation Design Par 575s function as spotlights for the band and vocalists, and because we can move them like other intelligent fixtures, we only needed two. We ultimately went with the Elation Design series intelligent fixtures for their low price point. We were able to get them as refurbs at a fraction of the cost, allowing us to get [more fixtures]. Also, Elation's customer service has been top notch. We went with Martin's LightJockey for lighting control because a quality lighting console was out of reach as far as budget went. It was a tough call deciding which PC-based software to go with but we ultimately chose LightJockey because of its friendly user interface and local technical support."
Every installation has its share of problems, and Crossroads was no exception. Miller relates one problem they ran into.
"There was a mistake made with our Driverack settings by one of our sound engineers that caused all of our crossover settings to be reset the day after we set the system up. The settings were supposed to be restored that night but before they could be fixed, the youth band jumps on stage, fires up the drums and ‘snap' go six of the eight ribbon drivers. I immediately called Peavey and they overnighted new ribbons to me and, although it wasn't the easiest process, we got them changed out in time for the next Sunday service."
Crossroads is very happy with the choices they made, and with the results of the upgrade. "We have successfully solved most of the sound issues we had," states Miller. "The lows are tight and punchy and the highs are very smooth."
Not only are they happy with the sound system; they are equally happy with the consultant. "The most important thing to us when it comes to the people we work with is the attitude of the heart," explains Miller. "Everyone has to be on the same page and following the same vision to achieve the goals. When it comes down to it, you are either behind the vision or you aren't. You may not agree with the solution, opinion or action being taken, but when the rubber meets the road, you are on board because you are on board with the vision. Matt is that guy. He consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty and he always goes out of his way at a moment's notice if we have a problem."
