As leaders in the production field, tech directors are tasked with keeping our heads wrapped around a rapid and sometimes overwhelming influx of technical knowledge. While the frenetic pace pushes against our time and understanding, it's our obligation to seek knowledge while employing the use of industry professionals in knowing how this technology can be used for the betterment of our church ministry.
Loudspeakers represent an area rich with development, but one that can be easily forgotten—new installations that incorporate those technical developments don't exactly happen every year in our respective buildings. With the progression of modern worship and increasingly high production standards that churches now seek, the need for ever more advanced loudspeaker systems has increased, as well. While the complexity of professional level loudspeakers is immense, staying current with leading technology and solutions never the less remains essential.
Church Production Magazine recently spoke to several loudspeaker manufacturers regarding how the house of worship market has affected their development process and innovation, the emerging technology being used, and the biggest differences in loudspeakers today from 10 years ago.
What are the major differences in loudspeakers today vs. 10 years ago?
Gunness:
Line array modules have gotten smaller, self-powered loudspeakers have become more common, and various forms of cardioid loudspeakers have become much more popular. From the point of view of Fulcrum Acoustic, we now offer coaxial devices spanning the full range of common coverage patterns; which brings the improved clarity and directional behavior of coaxes to bread and butter installations—installations that have been approached with essentially the same technology for decades.
Montrezor:
The biggest step forward has been in sound quality. Advances in transducers, speaker arrangement, modelization of finite elements to improve waveguides, fins, and laminar venting have all allowed for sound quality to move forward. We’ve also been able to design enclosures that are lighter, yet with improved sound quality. That’s a big load off the installer’s back, and the rigging points.
Kirby:
The biggest advancements in loudspeaker technology today aren’t necessarily the loudspeakers themselves, but more in the software that controls them or simulates their performance. Advancements in electronics and DSP have given us the ability to design powerful multi-channel amplifiers, complex FIR processing engines, smaller and lighter weight modules that fit inside the loudspeaker enclosure, but it’s the control software that really allows us to realize the potential benefits.
What new technologies are you seeing currently and on the horizon with loudspeakers?
McMahon:
Beam-steering loudspeaker technology is becoming a big trend—the ability to steer the beam of sound, correct low/mid buildups and other artifacts produced by line arrays. The application of beam steering is to put the sound where you want it to go instead of hitting the hard surfaces, so it’s effective for speech intelligibility and getting the message where you want it to go.
Armstrong:
To my mind, ‘loudspeaker technology is encompassed in complete systems. Not trends of smaller or bigger, pink or purple, but what we can now do with entire systems: speakers, amplifiers and DSP. The rubber meets the road when a firmware upgrade adds features to an existing system. For example, an upgrade, like the most recent one for our Nexo NXAMP, adds additional PEQs to amplifier channel processing. And for those of us who used to buy analog PEQs, the value-to-system implementation is huge, to say nothing of the cost savings.
King:
The desire to control and shape sound is the largest driver to innovation right now. The introduction of multi-cellular array technology started this trend with other competitors starting to emerge with different solutions to the same challenges. We’ve taken this into smaller boxes with the introduction of Coaxial Differential Dispersion technology that provides all of the benefits of coaxial designs with the even dispersion characteristics of differential dispersion to deliver wide and even coverage without beaming at high frequencies.
Shirley:
One of the technologies that we see trending is the use of DSP for directivity control and ‘beam-steering’ of coverage patterns for loudspeakers. Starting with the first use in columnar array loudspeakers, we are now seeing this technology used for vertical coverage manipulation in several larger-class loudspeaker systems. Add to that the increasing amount of coverage patterns within loudspeakers, [and] system designers now have a much greater choice in finding the right fit coverage for almost any room size or shape.
In regard to components (woofers, compression drivers, etc.) how has the efficiency and construction of those elements improved?
Schulz:
Efficiency has been improved by using neodymium. Less distortion and higher reliability of drivers. Across the board, simply better materials and deployment with less variation spread among production models. Modern amplifiers are able to handle higher voltages too. At d&b this means speakers can be customized to the highest capacities in combination with our system amplifiers to elevate the efficiency in the system software, DSP capabilities, and comprehensive filter technologies and limiting.
Schulman:
Compared to electronics and software, transducers have not significantly advanced. Though there have been improvements affording improved heat dissipation (and thus reduced power compression), excursion, cone stiffness, output-to-weight performance and manufacturing consistency, the more drastic advances have been in our ability to model and correct for inherent driver behavior. It’s effectiveness, however, depends massively on the consistency of a component compared to the next one off of the assembly line, across all operating levels, and also over its lifespan of the product. This is where advances in driver technology come in—without this consistency, this correction would not be possible.
Kirby:
A few years ago neodymium magnets became ubiquitous in loudspeaker systems, delivering an excellent compromise between magnet weight and power—and setting new benchmarks for future development. Due to a combination of increased demand, limited supply, and some international trade politics, neodymium prices skyrocketed overnight. This left manufacturers looking for new ways to achieve these power and weight goals without the heavy price of neodymium. We’ve seen significant advancements from component manufacturers, particularly in regard to improved voice coil cooling, allowing the use of smaller magnet structures and, hence, lower weight.
The house of worship market is a large sector for many loudspeaker manufacturers. What ways have you seen this market evolve and has this impacted your development process or product offerings?
Gunness:
For quite a few years, many churches insisted on line arrays even when other solutions might have worked better. While line arrays are still a great solution in certain cases, we have seen a trend of churches looking to other approaches as a way to keep the cost down. We developed our AH Series of large-format coaxial horns as an alternative to line arrays.They are big enough to provide pattern control at low frequencies while still being surprisingly inconspicuous.
King:
House of worship is arguably our second largest single market after live sound. The relationship of U.S. HOW in particular has mirrored development in the touring arena, partly because of the increased emphasis of live performance within worship and partly because so many living in the touring world are supporting their local community church, too. The success of our MLA multi-cellular array technology has transferred very quickly into houses of worship because the ability to control and shape sound is very prevalent, [since] so many buildings offer challenging acoustic spaces that our technology masters quickly. One of our thought processes when we were developing our CDD and CDD-LIVE range was how we could build viable solutions for smaller houses of worship spaces that didn’t require the technology and expense of our cellular systems, but still offered exemplary sound control and performance.
Montrezor:
Churches are looking to provide a better experience for their audiences, and this sector is quickly catching up to the live sound market in its professionalism and the quality of its equipment and teams. We’re even seeing several places, like Hillsong and Passion City Church, taking their productions out on the road, addressing audiences of tens of thousands. Looking to the future, I think houses of worship are an excellent ground for emerging technologies like multi-channel sound design—something that we are working on with our L-ISA team—because the ultimate goal is to create an immersive and engaging experience.
Schulman:
One of the major ways in which we have seen this market evolve is the progressively increasing level of production. Even in heavily volunteer-dependent organizations, the demands and expectations for the quality of the audio, video and lighting are extremely high and continually increasing. This has come to mean that as a manufacturer, we can no longer view the house of worship market as distinct from touring. On a technical level, the needs are now very closely aligned and very stringent. Thus, we are no longer designing discrete products specifically for houses of worship. Instead, we are determining how to expand our core product platforms to meet the specific needs of this market—while offering the performance demanded in the touring space.
