After a search of over 30 years for an affordable building site – the parish of King’s Church Amersham chose to construct an entirely new building on a newly available site. Completed in February 2014, the new £4 million church now provides meetings, counseling, youth rooms, and offices. Its 1,500 sq meters also include a main auditorium for 600 people where services, christenings, weddings, and other church events can take place.
The task of specifying and installing a sound reinforcement system was entrusted to the House of Worship and new building specialist Creative Audio-Visual Solutions (CAVS). “The parish contacted us when they were still in their old building and were purchasing the land for their new site,” recalls Rob Alvis, CAVS’s Sales Director. The biggest challenge, Alvis remembers, was the main auditorium. “The church worship is quite lively, with very modern dynamic music. They therefore wanted a system that not only delivers high speech intelligibility but also great full-range acoustic coverage – while at the same time not compromising the church’s budget.” Additional requirements were a sound and visual network throughout the building, which can be used independently or as an overflow from the main system.
To provide powerful and even coverage in the main auditorium, CAVS opted for an Electro-Voice sound system based on loudspeakers from the EV-Innovation series. Two Electro-Voice EVA line arrays are flown away from the walls and above the front platform. Based on simulations of different locations and dispersion angles, the ideal speakers for the task proved to be three EVA-2082S elements per side. Each of the installed EVA-2082S/1220 and EVA-2082S/126 contains dual 8’’ woofers and four 1.25’’ titanium diaphragm HF drivers with a dispersion angle of 120 by 20 degrees and 120 by 6 degrees respectively. Two additional EVF front-loaded 12’’ speakers provide coverage to the sides; two TX2181 dual 18’’ subwoofers assume responsibility for the low frequencies with EVID FM6.2 flush-mounted in-wall speakers rounding of the loudspeaker installation into the foyer area.
“Depending on what you need, you can select from the wide range of EV-Innovation speakers,” explains Alvis. “The EVFs are phenomenal in terms of output, projection, and power. The EVAs are cost-effective, easy to install, and have great sound quality. For me, they are the standout part of the Electro-Voice installation.”
The system is driven by two CPS 4.5, one CPS 2.12, and one PA1250T amplifier and controlled by a NetMax N8000 System Controller via IRIS-Net software. “With its individual IRIS-Net configuration, it’s very easy to make changes to the set-up,” explains Alvis. “We can even do remote programming.”
The response from the parish team and members of the congregation has been enthusiastic, says Alvis. King’s Church Amersham Project Leader, Mike Peters, commented: “Despite being in town planning for over 34 years, I have never been involved in anything that has produced the quality we have now at King’s Church Amersham.”
Resources:
http://www.electrovoice.com
