d&b delivers clarity for the community at Faith Bible
In The Woodlands, a rural idyll just outside the metropolitan area of Houston, Texas, Faith Bible Church was built to suit the needs of a thriving community. “As a new build, we advised the church to engage the services of acoustical consultants Jaffe Holden,” explained Bruce Simmons of Texas based audio contractors Hairel Enterprises. “They were engaged to design a perfect worship environment, allowing for amplified music and occasional choral performances.
“This is a fan shaped auditorium for approximately a thousand worshippers and has a reverb’ of around 1.4 secs, most active in the lower frequencies; it gives the room a beautiful natural warm sound. Of course when Hairel was contracted to design the sound reinforcement system it had to suit the room and not detract from the fantastic acoustic character.”
Simmons and Hairel elected a product line entirely new to them. “We had recently seen and heard a d&b J-Series system in a large Texas theatre with two balconies. A touring musical production, we had doubts at first that what they hung would be sufficient to cover the room correctly. But when they turned it on we were immediately impressed, not just by the coverage, but also the wonderful tonal balance across the full frequency range. So much so we contacted d&b’s US office that day.”
The Hairel design comprises L/C/R deployment; three identical hangs of T-Series Ti10L line array cabinets, with a pair of JSUBs flown immediately behind the centre line array. “Imaging was the big challenge,” said Simmons, “but true to d&b’s credo of ‘democracy for listeners’ we found when we modelled in ArrayCalc, that feeding the system in mono produces a focus on centre. The little E6 loudspeakers we arrayed across the stage lip for frontfill helped pull the image down for those first rows.”
The Ti10L is the smallest d&b line array, not that this perturbed house engineer BJ McGeever. “I trusted Bruce’s expertise, he understood our needs and I was excited by the upgrade from the dying system. We have, what I consider, quite a modern band. I don’t place a big emphasis on being extremely loud, but rather being extremely clear. One of my highest priorities throughout the process was making sure that, within reason, every seat in the room received a clear and dynamic sound. Even now, months later, I’m often struck by how well covered the room is, especially in the low end. Furthermore, I naturally emphasize vocal clarity in my mixes; bringing the vocals front and centre was wonderfully easy.”
“Faith Bible is the first project we have done with d&b and has been a great experience,” concluded Simmons. ”We did a full technology installation at Faith Bible and have a Crestron system to supervise it. We wanted a single button ‘standby’ mode which we knew was possible over the Ethernet network via Open Control Architecture but weren’t quite sure how. We called the US office and they contacted Germany. It must have been the middle of the night out there, but they responded within an hour. Now that’s service.”
