Many congregations are discovering the pull of higher technology as the demands on the church grow exponentially. The modern church is often multifunctional, hosting a number of events and services and the growing popularity of contemporary services means incorporating higher technology into their video and audio systems. And the deeper embrace of digital technology not only improves the overall quality of the presentation but often helps on the budgetary side as well.

Life Changers International Church, located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, outside of Chicago, has recently undergone a major expansion with a sanctuary that has a 3,000-seat capacity that is expandable to 5,000 seats. The new facility in total is 150,000 square feet built on 30 acres, and is a far cry from its humble beginnings in 1993 at Link Elementary School in Chicago. Now, 12 years later, the church, ministered by Gregory Dickow Ministries, has thriving church campuses and a television ministry whose main program has an international reach of more than half a billion people weekly.

In order to meet the challenges inherent in such a ministry, the designers had to look to high-tech solutions for its audio and video programs and presentations. Audio Analysts, a Colorado Springs-based audio/video design and installation firm, opted to create a completely digital audio chain from stage to console, supported by fiber optic connections and culminating in a state-of-the-art line array loudspeaker system arching across the top of the stage. The concept was to provide the most advanced technology ensuring high-fidelity sound reproduction and high-quality video while still fitting within a budget.

“The design and implementation of this church is the way the market is now moving,” said Robert Langlois, Senior Project Engineer at Audio Analysts. “People are finding out that good fiber optic systems are not only available, but are now more cost-effective than other solutions in many situations. In this case, we used the FiberPlex Light Viper in conjunction with a Yamaha PM5D digital console and JBL’s Vertec Line Array loudspeakers. You have the most technologically advanced church without being out of line in the budget.”

In fact, choosing the technology may have been the easiest part of the project, as the firm was required to design and install this major project in 90 days. Audio Analysts was called in just in time to specify conduit right before they were starting to pour concrete. In order to keep the field labor to a minimum and reduce the workload of the electricians, they chose fiber optics. This also guaranteed high-quality signal routing and greater flexibility and provided the church with options for future expansion of signal channels, built into the current system.

The FiberPlex system is comprised of the VIS-1832 stage box and VIM-1832 mix position box with a 32x8 configuration. The use of two stage boxes brings the configuration to a 64x16 input/output capacity to and from the stage and the Yamaha digital console and the video master control station. This approach solved many problems and saved the church thousands of dollars while maintaining flexibility in the system. For example, the splits are already in place for future expansion and the use of the fiber allowed them to have both analog and digital feeds simultaneously from the stage split for recording or streaming.

From the Yamaha digital console, the system feeds digital directly to Crown I-Tech amplifiers with 24 bit/96kHz converters and integrated DSP to provide the most quiet drive. The Crown amps employ the IQWic, which is the Crown IQ software running on Windows platform that allows control and monitoring of an entire system from a central location. The Crown IQ Networks can perform amplifier control and monitoring, digital signal processing (DSP), automatic mixing, routing, ambient noise system level control, and system and load monitoring.

Those amps would drive a set of JBL Vertec Line Array speakers. When considering the speaker choice, the designers had several things to take into consideration, including the sleek design curvature of the front of the room, the fact that it is a television ministry and therefore must take visual framing into consideration, and, of course, coverage, sound pressure levels and fidelity.

Because they needed a speaker cabinet with a small footprint that could still put out a lot of SPL, Langlois opted for the JBL Vertec VT4887 speaker, augmented by the VT4880 subwoofers. The VT4887s are flown with six cabinets in each of three line arrays in an arc over the front of the stage area, interspersed with two stacks holding three each of the subwoofers. This approach met all the criteria: low-profile, high-quality sound reproduction, fit the design and landed the project squarely within their budget.

“The reason we chose Vertec was the unique properties of the Line Array and our ability to focus the energy to where the people are located, while keeping as much energy off the walls as possible,” said Langlois. “This room may have been able to be done with a traditional system, but it would have ended up being a nightmare acoustically. The other benefit was being able to predict the hang of the speakers using JBL’s Line Array Calculator. This made life very easy for the riggers. There was no question about angles or hang points – it was already done.”

Another advantage of the system is that it allows for easy adaptability as the church grows. System changes can be quickly implemented to expand its capability. Meanwhile, on the video side, the church has its own video department, so Audio Analysts’ responsibilities there were limited to installing flat-panel video screens and two Eiki 10,000 lumen projectors, one on each side of the stage.

The overall design is elegant in its technical implementation and visually subtle in both sound and vision. As churches expand and their ministries become more diverse, the use of advanced technologies becomes necessary for them to make the message clear and to meet budget demands at the same time.