THE PANEL: (Top Left) Doug Hood, President, CSD Group Inc., Fort Wayne, Ind. / (Top Right) Paul Johnson, Account Manager, Guitar Center Professional, Detroit, Mich. / (Bottom Left) Bobby Taylor, Vice President, All Pro Sound, Pensacola, Fla. / (Bottom Right) TC Furlong, President, TC Furlong Inc., Lake Forest, Ill.
Larger churches usually grab most of the attention in publications and media, giving the impression that they represent the norm. However, according to figures posted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Harford, Conn., more than 60% of American Christians worship in congregations with Sunday attendance under 500. Even more surprising, half of all churches in the country have Sunday attendance of 75 or fewer. Indeed, megachurches are the exception, not the rule.
Yes, small churches also deserve attention and respect, and certainly a modestly sized gathering of worshippers also benefits from excellence in sound reproduction. To give small congregations their due, Church Production has assembled a select panel of four leading sound designers to help guide them through the process of loudspeaker selection. For the purposes of this discussion, we (somewhat arbitrarily) defined “small church” as one with maximum seating in the 350-400 range.
Primary Considerations: What comes first?
Before evaluating various loudspeakers, Doug Hood advises close scrutiny of subjective factors.
“I like to have my clients talk through whether the system design will be driven by audio performance or by visual aesthetics,” Hood says. “It's important to know where you stand, because this could drive all decisions going forward [because] it may limit the type and size of loudspeakers. Then—taking spoken word intelligibility as a given—we also need to look at music style. Will it be just keyboards and acoustic guitars, or a rock-style band? That will determine the SPL requirements, system bandwidth and the amount of horsepower needed.”
And he adds, “Another consideration is whether your music program will benefit from stereo, [since] often a single flown center cluster will otherwise give excellent results at a lower cost. But for most contemporary worship music, you want to have that stereo spread. It's more complicated, and not everybody will hear the full stereo image, but from a musical perspective it's a night and day difference.”
Working with Your Room
The next step is to look at—and listen to—your worship space, paying close attention to architectural acoustics and seating layout.
“Every room is a custom fit,” insists TC Furlong. “There is no ‘one size fits all.' The geometry of the room, in the plan view [overhead] and section view [vertical] is what will ultimately dictate your choice of loudspeakers. You need to first know your coverage and level requirements and then strive to achieve uniformity throughout the space.”
Adds Bobby Taylor: “Acoustics need to be considered alongside any loudspeaker system. If the acoustics are problematic, you can spend all you want on loudspeakers and still end up with bad sound. What will happen if we excite the ceiling or wall surfaces? What frequencies will be affected? You also need to look at the room dimensions and seating layout, whether it's a permanent installation or a portable church situation.
“In a permanent install, you also need to consider the challenges of physically mounting and flying the loudspeakers, and getting cabling to all locations. Also, electrical can be a challenge, as some smaller and older churches will have limited power available. That means looking at loudspeaker efficiency if you want to avoid the cost of installing more electrical circuits.”
Line arrays: Probably not, however …
Our panel was generally skeptical about using compact, true line arrays (with variable splay between cabinets) in these limited spaces.
“I don't think I would recommend a full line array for a church of this size,” says Paul Johnson. “In most spaces that small, they won't need that long throw or higher degree of fine-tuning of vertical coverage.”
Line arrays often entail too much complexity for small churches, notes TC Furlong. “To do a proper line array, you really need to do precise acoustical modeling to determine how to set the angles between elements to match the seating geometry. Also, having multiples of cabinets will add to the total cost.”
Also, in portable church applications, line arrays still have to be flown. “You have to bring in Genie lifts and that can really be a pain,” says Johnson. “It's usually not the way to go.”
However, there are exceptions to every rule. “There are situations in long narrow rooms where you can use the lobes of a segmented line array to cover the main floor and a balcony,” says Furlong. “That might work better than main speakers and balcony delays.”
Finally, Bobby Taylor was the most positive regarding line arrays. “In many cases a mini line array can be easier to handle and install, particularly because it is very forgiving on the horizontal dispersion pattern. It can blanket a wide room where with ‘point and shoot' boxes you may need even more units and you'll have to be precise in location and aiming. That said, you often have to be wary of putting too much energy on the side walls with line arrays.”
Fixed Curvature Arrays
The fixed curvature arrays received strong support across the board since they offer a good combination of simplicity and flexibility in a cost-efficient package.
“Installation is easy and no calculations are involved,” observes Taylor. “They work well because the coupling between boxes is all pre-engineered. There's a certain point where you won't have the precise control of a line array, but in most small churches this isn't an issue.”
“These arrays are very straightforward and system pricing is attractive,” adds Johnson. “Generally you have about a 90% horizontal with 18% or so vertical, and you can ‘dial in' whatever vertical you need by adding cabinets. You can configure up to five, but in most small churches we use only two or three.”
Furlong adds a note of caution, particularly applicable in portable applications where the arrays are on poles close to front seats. “If you use three or more boxes, you have to be attentive to the gain shading necessary to balance out the near and far throws. It can be tricky, and it's not always done correctly.”
The Column Comeback
Once the staple for small church installations, column loudspeakers fell out of favor for a few decades. Today, they can be a preferred option, according to our panel.
“Don't forget about these, especially for special situations,” Taylor reports. “They work extremely well for fills and choir monitors, as many are small and discreet. Some low-cost passive models can get more distance than point source boxes, and with very clean sound. And the newer ones with built-in DSP for beam steering offer great flexibility in coverage. Some also have exceptionally good sound, [although] they are expensive.”
Hood also favors columns in many applications, but adds a few caveats. “Column only work well when wall-mounted,” he says. “Usually they don't work well when flown [because] the vertical coverage is too narrow—unless you have the pricey beam steering type. Also, as a general rule, columns are better suited for speech and lighter acoustic music. For high-energy music styles, other solutions are probably preferred.”
Johnson is particularly enthusiastic about some of the newer portable column systems, often coupled to companion subwoofers. “These can be great for small church plants or touring music ministries with just a few acoustic instruments. You can set up and take down in minutes, and then throw the whole system in the back of your car.”
Getting to the Point (Source)
When all is said and done, the point source loudspeaker—in a multitude of varieties—is the likely solution for most small churches.
“Point source offers the greatest flexibility in many situations,” points out Hood. “This approach really shines when you have a low ceiling. You can get one point source box that will give you just the vertical coverage you need, where you might need four or five in a line array. Generally, point source gives you more bang for your buck, and more choices. In portable situations, you'll save time in loading and set up, and you'll need less space in your van or trailer.”
Among point source loudspeakers, the self-powered options are now essentially as numerous as the passive systems. Which technology is better suited to smaller churches? Another split decision here, with reticence toward permanently installing self-powered systems but enthusiasm for powered portable applications.
“You need power where the speakers are, and if that's up in the ceiling it can be a problem,” says Hood. “Also, if the electronics break, they can be difficult to access. We haven't seen that as being much of an issue, but still it's a psychological hurdle. Almost every loudspeaker now has a powered version, but I would not recommend low-budget models when you have difficult access. You're better off paying more for proven reliability.”
In portable applications, where speakers are readily accessible and power available (albeit often running under rubber mats), powered speakers get a solid thumbs up.
“Powered speakers eliminate amp racks so they save space,” reminds Furlong. “Also, you need to bi-amp loudspeakers for maximum power, but with external amplifiers you have to set the proper balance between highs and lows. That's not always done properly with passive bi-amped systems, but with self-powered it's built in. We've been using self-powered systems for 20 years and highly recommend them.”
Smart speakers: Are we there yet?
What about self-powered loudspeakers with built-in DSP, network connections and/or Bluetooth? Do “smart loudspeakers” make sense for smaller churches?
According to Taylor, such systems are the wave of the future. “For a 300-seat church we may not be quite there yet, but it won't be long,” he says. “We're heading down that path and we won't be coming back. So pay attention, [because] it will be in your next round of upgrades. These systems will make portable church setups so much easier. You just connect everything with CAT-5 cable, plug in the power and you're good to go.”
But Johnson advises caution in the near term. “It's fine to have status monitoring and adjustable DSP settings via the network or over Bluetooth,” he says. “If something goes wrong, you still keep going with the current settings. But as for primary audio, we're not there for small churches. Too many things can still go wrong, and small churches usually don't have in-house expertise to address networking issues.”
The Big Picture for Small Churches
When making any loudspeaker choices for your small church, as Taylor reminds us, it's important to remember what the loudspeakers are there for—ultimately. Avoid any temptation to go further than you need to go.
“It's always our responsibility to be good stewards of ministry resources. Sometimes it's tempting to go for the latest technology because the church down the street has it. I've seen situations where a pastor tells a young audio tech to ‘get what we need' and ends up buying an overly elaborate, bass-heavy rig for a church with an older demographic. It may work okay, but it's not good stewardship.”
