Sound Image deploys d&b Soundscape at California church.
The Village Community Presbyterian Church, founded in 1956 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, serves thousands of worshipers throughout San Diego. Sound Image Integration (San Diego) recently installed a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system with En-Scene object-based mixing.
The church started as a traditional Presbyterian church but has since added a contemporary service, with one of each service on Sundays. The traditional service utilizes a variety of instrumental and vocal musicians. The choir can range from 15-150+ members depending on the service. They also use chamber and full orchestras, brass ensembles, hand-bell ensembles, real pipe organ, concert grand piano, and other acoustic instruments. The contemporary worship band is typically a core group of an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, keyboards/piano, electric drums, lead vocals, and multiple backup vocals. The San Diego Symphony and other professional classical and jazz ensembles also regularly hold concerts in the sanctuary.
“When we started working with Village Community Church to design a new sound system, their biggest concern was speech intelligibility, as with every house of worship,” states Jake Henricksen, Design Consultant & Account Executive, Sound Image Integration.
Henricksen said that initially, Sound Image modeled exploded mono, hybrid stereo/mono, and LCR systems. “With the wide variety of instrumental music and theatrical productions the 300-seat church hosts, we felt the space deserved something special. We discussed the benefits of sound localization and improved coverage using Soundscape at length. We also shared d&b stories of house of worship experiences with Soundscape and videos about the technical aspects. Once the design committee understood how powerful sound localization is when connecting with an audience, we never looked back. From that point forward, our underlying design criteria was to make the loudspeaker system disappear physically and acoustically. We wanted the congregation to experience the spoken word and music as if it was all unamplified, coming straight from the source.”
d&b Soundscape enables further connection between the stage and the congregation, creating a more intimate experience. While Soundscape systems typically require more loudspeaker positions than a traditional PA setup, the loudspeakers can often be smaller cabinets at each position, improving sightlines or even tucked away out of sight. Since both level and delay processing are independently utilized per loudspeaker position in real time, multiple loudspeakers are producing sound simultaneously to create accurate localization no matter where a listener is seated.
The initial d&b ArrayCalc model demonstrated how even coverage across the almost 180º wide seating area was possible using just a few small xS-Series loudspeaker elements that could be custom color matched at the factory. Sound Image provided initial CAD elevations and renderings showing loudspeaker locations, and using a standard RAL color chart, picked a color that blends into the ceiling perfectly.
The d&b system configuration includes 5 x 12S-D main loudspeakers, 2 x 44S loudspeakers for out fills, 2 x 44S in-wall, flush mounted for front fills, 2 x 16C column loudspeakers for stage fills, 2 x 27S SUBs, 3 x 30D amplifiers, 1 x DS10 Dante network bridge, and a DS100 signal engine with En-Scene for Soundscape.
