This past week has been one of the most exciting I can remember in a long time. Those of you that follow me on Twitter (if you don’t why not?) are aware of the massive audio system upgrade that Lake Pointe church has been doing. I’ve gotten a number of questions so I thought I would put together some details and some better pictures in hopes of providing a good overview of what we did and why. First, some history.
Lake Pointe got this building back in the mid 90’s when the church that was in it could no longer afford to keep it. They and LP literally traded buildings and LP did not assume any more debt. A blessing to both churches for sure. The original sound system was in a speaker cloud over the stage that you can still see in some of the pictures and was filled with Community horns and subs.
In 1996, LP had Acoustic Dimensions design and install a new sound system. The system was all EAW including some custom made boxes all powered by Crown Macrotech amps. The console was a used PM4000.
Over the years the programming of LP has changed and grown into a very modern worship music style. The increase in the level of excellence along with the increased demands of programming and the age of the system it was apparent the EAW system was not up to the task. Even before I came on staff at LP there were plans to upgrade it as soon as possible. Numerous band aid measures had been taken to keep things running. The old system was just falling apart. Plans were put in place earlier this year with
Clark Pro Media so when the time came the homework would be done. Little did we know then it come this quick. The steady decline culminated about 2 months ago when during a weekend service there was some major driver failure that caused most of one side of the auditorium to lose significant high end. The down hill slope we had been on just fell off a cliff. We did some SMAART testing the next week and learned that there was a lack of adequate coverage in 50% of our seating area. It was time to make a change.
About 2 weeks ago we installed the new Digidesign Venue D-Show console at FOH. This let us start working with our team and get them comfortable with using the desk. We also did not want to add this to the tasks that would be needed during the speaker install week. Just by changing the console, there was a very noticeable difference in the sound. Already a win.
The new system consists of 56
Meyer MICA boxes hung in 4 arrays in a LRLR configuration. There are 2 DF4 speakers at the bottom of each array to provide down fill coverage and 13 M1D’s on the front of the stage for front fills. We cover the bottom end with 18 700HP subs that fan out across the front of the room. Driving it all are 3 Meyer Galileo processors.
Clark did lots of work on configurations in the MAPP software to insure we would get great coverage all over the room. It’s incredible how accurate the software is in real world situations. It tells it like it is.
We started on last Sunday the 6th taking down all the old boxes. Monday was mostly a rigging day and getting front fills wired which are actually mounted to the front of the stage now.
Tuesday we got all the arrays up and stopped to listen with no processing and it was already amazing sounding.
Someone missed a wire.
By Wednesday we had the front fills and subs all running. We did some very basic EQ and timing work as we had a big men’s ministry event that night. The system was great. On Thursday Will Sargent came in and began his magic and by late Friday all the DF4’s were up and the system had a solid tuning. I think I had some tears that night. All of us couldn’t be happier.
Labels: Audio, Digidesign, Meyer, Upgrade, Venue
