Toss the bathwater, keep the baby. That vintage metaphor has applications for house of worship (HOW) AV, especially in the digital era. Approaching AV systems renovation projects, designers and specifiers can do their HOW clients a major economic favor by carefully vetting the AVL systems already in place in a house of worship. The boundary between analog and digital is a clear divide, but once across it many existing systems can still be integrated with newer equipment, sometimes with just a software or firmware upgrade, in the process saving those clients money that can be spent elsewhere.
“There’s a surprising amount of equipment that can survive a [systems] renovation and still be very useful for a house of worship,” observes Kevin Potts, a consultant at Coherent Design, whose HOW portfolio includes megachurch Cottonwood Christian in Los Alamitos, Calif. “And it can save churches a substantial amount of money, if it’s done correctly.”
Loudspeakers and longevity
Potts says that sound systems are the best candidates for this type of technology triage. “Loudspeakers probably have more longevity potential than any other single component of the AV systems,” he says. “They can be repaired: they can be re-coned and have other fixes done on them. We’ve seen nightclubs, which will drive speakers harder than any church would, re-cone their loudspeakers two or three times before they actually need to be replaced. That’s definitely the first place I’d look at in a house-of-worship project if I was looking to save money by re-using existing system components.”
“Loudspeakers probably have more longevity potential than any other single component of the AV systems." Kevin Potts, Consultant, Coherent Design, Las Vegas, NV
That also extends to the PA’s speaker enclosures, which Potts reminds are essentially wooden boxes; as long as care is taken with porting and other acoustic-mechanical elements of the enclosure’s design, physical damage to the enclosure can usually be repaired fairly easily.
Amplifiers are also candidates for extended use. Potts says it’s not unusual to see systems with amplifiers that are a decade or older still in use, as long as they’ve been maintained and kept within their operating-temperature ranges.
“It’s really the processor that requires updating,” he explains. “If you can keep tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of speakers and amplifiers in place and upgrade the system with new DSP for a few thousand dollars, you’re way ahead.”
Lighting considerations
Despite the momentum towards LED lighting, Potts says that LED is still costly for many churches, and that incandescent lighting is still as viable as it’s ever been. Here the focus should be on keeping existing dimmers working.
“A good, reliable dimmer, from a manufacturer like ETC or Strand, should be able to last as long as 30 years,” Potts estimates, with their lifespans extended with software and firmware upgrades, and in some cases a newer lighting board, to accommodate moving-head fixtures. “There are plenty of big-city performing arts centers and theaters that are still using incandescent lighting, and many lighting directors still prefer it.”
Video developments
Video is the one area of systems that usually compels investment in new equipment, because its technology changes so often. Equipment in the three-to-five-years-old range can be considered “ancient,” he says, by modern standards. “Everything is moving towards chips and networks now in video,” he says. But the silver lining there is that items like switchers, which cost as much as $40,000 five years ago, can now be had for a fraction of that, he contends, citing aggressive pricing by manufacturers like Blackmagic Design, which has been pushing video costs down across the board.
Video is the one area of systems that usually compels investment in new equipment, because its technology changes so often. Equipment in the three-to-five-years-old range can be considered “ancient."
The bottom line, says Potts, is that not every component of an AVL system has to be bought new, every time. As AVL moves deeper into DSP, processing can be the focus of a lot of upgrades.
“There is a tendency among manufacturers to sell the latest and the greatest, and that’s natural,” he says. “But not every church has to have the new big thing every time they do a systems renovation.”
As AVL moves deeper into DSP, processing can be the focus of a lot of upgrades.
Other places, other spaces
What many churches do have, however, are more than one space that can use AVL gear, and Casey Sherred, senior consultant at Idibri, a Dallas-based consultancy that’s worked on HOW projects including Brentwood Baptist Church near Nashville and Cathedral of Praise in Charleston, says those spaces can very comfortably be the hand-me-down recipients of much of the AVL equipment that’s displaced in a sanctuary renovation. Alternately, he suggests, portable and temporary satellite church locations can also utilize previously used equipment from the main church’s AVL systems.
... keep expectations reasonable: chances are, a potpourri of older products won’t be able to exist on a network, like the systems they’re replacing will.
“In general, figure that lighting [products] can have a useful lifespan of up to 10 years; audio equipment can last up to 8-10 years; and video maybe four to five years,” he says. “As long as the equipment is properly maintained, it can spend the rest of its useful lifespan in other rooms or other church locations.”
For instance, he notes, audio recording equipment can keep going for a very long time, regardless of the format it uses, even if that’s tape. “As long as you can play back what you record, the type of recorder really doesn’t matter,” he says.
When shifting equipment that’s being replaced to another application, Sherrod recommends planning the scheduling of its installation carefully, to make sure that everything is properly installed and working together before its planned first use in a new location. And keep expectations reasonable: chances are, a potpourri of older products won’t be able to exist on a network, like the systems they’re replacing will.
But good purchasing decisions all along a church’s timeline can mean that there will likely be important pieces of equipment that can be kept in a renovated system, or utilized to good effect in other aspects of the church’s operations, saving money in the process.
