Nspire Outreach in Lawrenceville,Ga., recently completed construction of their new facility. The design eschews traditional pews or theater-style seats in favor of seating around tables throughout the worship space, and chandeliers provide the house lighting in an environment the church leadership describes as "Church meets House of Blues." Providing this intimate atmosphere in which to worship was a primary design consideration in the construction of Nspire's new community center and worship space, and reflects the overall worship style of the church.
Nspire's services are a dynamic mix of music, practical teaching, drama, dance, multimedia, prayer/meditationand more. Fitting with this, when the new space was being planned Senior Pastor and Worship Leader Gregg Kennard felt that locally based Jireh Supplies shared the vision as well as the expertise to provide the church with the appropriate technology required to help fulfill his vision. The process of design, planning and integration of the new systems took two months. The actual installation process of pulling cable, installing equipment, and rigging speaker system, along with installing stage boxes, completing setup, sound EQ and training took approximately two weeks. Given a 10-year relationship with Pastor Kennard and Nspire Church, Jireh was entrusted to provide all design and integration services for the new center. The building started out as a warehouse shell with a bare metal ceiling. During early pre-planning with the architect, Jireh recommended that the ceiling be acoustically treated. All electrical runs were determined at that point as well.
A nine-person vocal/praise team and a six-member band provide a mix of music for worship in styles ranging from pop, urban, rock, neo-classical, country, and gospel. Jireh selected Sennheiser E835 mics for vocals, noting their smooth response and overall clarity. Wireless systems are comprised of Audio-Technica 3000 series outfitted with Provider Series PSM1 headworn mics. These are used for lead vocals as well as for delivering the Message. For audio wiring infrastructure, Jireh supplied a 32 x 8 analog snake by Rapco to get the signal from the stage to the FOH position, with eight Rapco floor boxes positioned in the stage area for convenient mic inputs.
Jireh Supplies' Gene Byce states that the selection of the mixing console was an easy decision to make. He continues, "A few months prior to this installation, Presonus had just introduced the new StudioLive digital console. We worked closely with Presonus Vice President Rick Naqvi during the integration of these consoles. These consoles were chosen because they contained all of the digital processing required and all of the digital processing required for future expansion as well. For the church to grow with these consoles was very important. The StudioLive consoles are modular and can be daisy-chained together into one seamless console. The Presonus StudioLive not only contains onboard effects, but full EQ capabilities, compressors, limiters, gates, high pass filters and the ability to store and recall scenes. By choosing the Presonus StudioLive we were able to eliminate outboard rack mount gear, in turn saving the church thousands of dollars."
Jireh also selected Crown XTi series amps to drive the PA. The DSP processing, as well as the lock-out feature (to prevent accidental changes to the settings), were important features in Byce's eyes.
The Crown amplifiers drive a loudspeaker system by Grund Audio, which, according to Byce, was another easy selection. "We knew right away that we wanted to implement Grund Audio speakers. We felt this was one of the only speaker manufacturers that would be able to custom-build the speakers and customize the horn dispersion based on the characteristics of the room. We have used Grund Audio speakers and worked with Frank Grund on numerous installations and knew that these speakers would outperform our expectations and the expectations of Nspire Outreach."
Nspire used the UB2020 models (two per side) in a stereo configuration, with two Grund Audio GT-LPB-36C dual 18-inch subwoofers installed to provide the low-end reinforcement. Room EQ was performed using an Ivie Pal interfaced with a Dell Axim X51v running IE35 system software. All services are recorded direct to CD using a Tascam CD-RW900 recorder and multi-tracked to an Apple iMac running the Presonus StudioOne software.
Visuals play a large part in Nspire's services, so Jireh selected an Eiki LC-XG250L 4,000-lumen video projector, which projects onto a Da-lite screen. Nspire volunteers devised a large gold picture frame for the screen, giving the appearance that the projected image is a large piece of vintage art. An FSR MAS-3200 video switcher/scaler provides the interface between the various video sources Nspire uses.
The lighting system consists of 16 PAR 56 fixtures that came over from the old facility and new Chauvet dimmer packs and Obey70 lighting board, though there are plans to expand the system to include intelligent lighting.
Jireh Supplies trained the technical staff on the new systems and the sessions were also recorded to DVD for future reference.
