When Bible Baptist Church of DeQuincy, La., started planning its new youth facility, it was a "clean slate" to build the gym and classrooms they needed. It was also an opportunity to enable the growth of the church's blossoming musical ministry through a state-of-the-art venue with professional audio, video and lighting.
Bible Baptist's new building was planned to contain a large multi-purpose room, a new kitchen, café, meeting space, fitness center, and five classrooms. The multi-purpose space would serve as a primary meeting space for youth for both athletic activities and the band and praise events on Wednesday nights. On Sunday morning, the classrooms would be used for bible study and Sunday night worship services for the full church could be accommodated in the multi-purpose room by converting the full-sized gym to a 700-seat venue. Having a professionally equipped space for mid-week, high-energy youth services; concerts; and other special events would allow the church to provide events for the church and community without having to rent space or equipment.
From the project's inception, it was stressed that this new building would function to communicate the word of God and to aid in the ministry of the church. David Earley, Bible Baptist's music minister, saw great sound, media and lighting for the stage as essential tools to accomplish the church's mission. As Earley put it, "Without the tools to effectively communicate, we will only have walls, with nothing to aid in that task."
As the project leader for Bible Baptist, Earley knew they needed a contractor who could help design systems, as well as find creative solutions to handle the room's other use as a gym and meeting place. Systems integrator Ethan Miller of Advanced Audio/Video Technologies based in Sulphur, La., put in a bid for the space with a comprehensive $250,000 AVL design. Miller's plans were chosen as the best, but even before the new construction started, Earley and Miller knew that teamwork would be key to implementing the system they envisioned. "We needed someone who would understand our need for great sound and lighting, but also make the technology easy for us," says Earley. "From the first day, our relationship with Ethan was key."
Problem solvers
A problem that Earley and Miller immediately faced was that the room could not have a permanently installed sound booth. In addition, the church didn't want wires on the floor. "We didn't want to give up a good position in the room from which to mix audio," says Earley, who also knew that whatever solution they devised needed to be quick and easy to set up.
Earley and Miller devised a rolling rack system as a "portable" mixing console. The audio rack resides, well protected, in a closet during the week when the gym is in use. Connected in the closet, the system provides reinforcement for background music and a single microphone for announcements. When rolled to its position on the floor, it connects via one CAT-6 cable to a floor plate and the rolling rack functions as a full mixing station. "It made sense to go digital," says Earley. "In the case of our rolling console, we make one connection and we're in business."
For Bible Baptist's rolling sound booth, Miller specified a Yamaha M7CL-32 mixing console connected by two digital stage boxes to provide 32 stage inputs and 16 rack returns over a single CAT-6 cable. Earley and Miller both agree that the M7CL-32 is well suited for churches that need a digital console because of its simple, straightforward interface. The M7's Centralogic design allows total control from an easily accessible central area where blocks of eight channels can be operated via a touch-panel display with its controls directly below.
"It's certainly the easiest digital board I've tried," says Earley, who feels that the new board's layout and design helped the church's volunteers in their transition from analog to digital. "Especially for volunteers who don't use it all the time," he adds, "having an interface that's easy to understand is critical."
While the popular M7 console was selected for its ease-of-use and basic digital features, it has advanced features, as well. One impressive feature is StageMix, an application for the Apple iPad that provides remote control of mixing functions. The free application retains the simple, intuitive graphical interface making it portable and available from anywhere within wireless range. Using the app on an iPad, volunteers can adjust monitor mixes directly from the performers' positions on stage, rather than having to rely on verbal directions from a second engineer or performer.
System design details
Miller's design for the house speaker system in the gym consists of one JBL VP7315 (with optional CobraNet Input Module) and two JBL VP7212s. These are JBL's 15- and 12-inch VP Series offerings of bi-amplified, full-range speakers rated at 2,200 watts peak and 1,100 watts continuous power. These are supported by three JBL VPSB7118 powered subs rated at 3,600 watts peak and 1,800 watts continuous power.
The stage fold-back monitor system includes four JBL MRX512M rated at 400 watts continuous power. With a 70x70-degree horn, the speakers are designed for use as floor wedges or side fills. For this application, Miller chose two Crown XTi 1,000 amplifiers (275 watts per channel at eight ohms) for their reliability and built-in digital signal processing, which includes speaker presets for crossover frequencies, EQ, limiting, delay, and a subharmonic synthesizer. Four Shure ULX-P SM-58 wireless hand-held microphones are installed in the rack back stage, with signals traveling to the console via Cobranet digital snake. From the console, digital connections run to the speaker system, from the stage and out to one of the classrooms in the new building, which functions as a "green room."
At the heart of the gym's projection system are two Sanyo PLC-XM150s. These 6,000-lumen projectors include an innovative power lens-shifting function that enables projection adjustment without changing the projector position. The projectors are mounted high and enclosed in Chief cages for protection from basketballs and other gym activities. A Kramer VP-729 nine-input scaler/switcher handles the HD video signal that is projected onto two 16x9-foot Da-Lite screens.
For added protection, motorized screens were installed in specially made recesses in the walls, which help integrate the system with the look of the room. Kramer control systems are used to raise and lower the screens, as well as to power-up projectors. The particularly large screens were chosen so that presented material could be easily viewed from the back of the upstairs game room/café that overlooks the gym.
The game room upstairs is equipped with two Samsung LN55C650TV 55-inch commercial display monitors, receiving signal from a Kramer VS-66H HDMI matrix switcher. Chief LTMU swivel mounts allow easy adjustment for viewing the flat panels from multiple angles. Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 gaming consoles are connected through the Kramer matrix, as well as a Samsung BD-P1600 Blu-ray player and computer video input. Each monitor can view any combination of inputs at the same time. Sound in the game room is provided with 20 Atlas FAP82T coaxial ceiling speakers, custom painted to match the black ceiling tile and grid.
Another challenging customization for the game room systems was the church's desire to make game room inputs available to the main system in the gym, as well as having feeds from the main systems available in the game room. Connected by what Earley likes to call "a double umbilical cord," the systems are matrixed so that presentations in the gym can be experienced in the upstairs game room and outputs of the upstairs game room system can be routed to the gym. This allows for additional seating in the game room and, more importantly for younger members of the congregation, youth members can do gaming in a big way-play a video game upstairs while seeing the action on the two 16-foot wide screens in the gym and hearing sounds on the big main sound system.
For lighting in the new multi-purpose room, Earley wanted solid theatrical lighting. "We'd seen the results of less-than-perfect lighting before," he says. "People on stage looked washed out or, worse, haunted by dark facial shadows." Earley and Miller worked together to come up with a phased approach that would allow them to budget for professional fixtures zoned to cover the 16x32-foot stage. Miller specified six NSI/Leviton 0EL30-50B ellipsoidal spotlights and 24 NSI PAR64-0BL black PAR64 cans for the job with two NSI N2408-CD0 120-volt, eight-channel commercial dimmer packs for control. Using Applied Electronics' custom-built cages to protect the fixtures during sporting events was seen as an absolute necessity for this installation.
More upgrades
After the design of new AVL for the multi-purpose room had started, Miller and the technicians from Advanced Audio/Video Technologies, were asked to address audio problems in the church's existing 700-seat main sanctuary. After clearing some basic grounding problems and treating the acoustical situation with panels from Perdue Acoustics, Miller recommended several improvements that would help the church achieve its goal of making the sanctuary a more contemporary venue. As the format of its service was changing from a standing pulpit to the preaching on stage, 16 new Lightronics spotlights were added for more even lighting coverage.
"Lightronics was great to work with and saved us time," says Miller, who needed a good lighting design that was also very cost effective. Chris Pease, sales and marketing manager for Lightronics, provided use of the company's in-house lighting design service to create a plan specific to Bible Baptist's needs using Lightronics model FXELTA, 575-watt ellipsoidals. The unit comes in 10%, 19%, 26%, 30% and 50% beam spread angles to fit various applications. In addition to improving the lighting, the existing sound system (a large black cluster on a white ceiling) was replaced with white JBL AE Series speakers that would provide better coverage, as well as a better visual match with the look of the sanctuary. These were powered by Crown XTi 1000 amplifiers.
To get the benefits of great digital sound control and minimize the need for additional training, the Yamaha M7CL-32 digital mixing console was chosen to match the console in the multi-purpose room.
As a result of the system upgrades, Earley now describes his music ministry as having a clearly unique sound. "We reach people with what they know," he says, "but we do it in our own way."
Through his vision and partnership with Miller, Bible Baptist Church now has a professional venue for its music ministry and a modern sanctuary for worship-and they've done it their own way.
