This year, the services were so large they required all 32,000sq.ft of the arena at the Cox Business Services Convention Center. Facing the sizable task of managing audio needs for the room was Hooper Sound Production Services.
"The night services have a high sense of theatricality and plenty of sonic energy on tap," says Hooper Sound's Jerry Hooper. "Technically savvy in their own right, administrators from the church came to us with a clearly-defined set of needs centered around building a sonic landscape that spread uniformly throughout the environment, bringing total clarity to both the spoken word and a dynamic range of music."
With these goals serving as guideposts, Hooper and his crew implemented a design employing large flown loudspeaker arrays suspended to the left and right of the stage. Bringing ample coverage to the approximately 10,000 seats used for the services. The blueprint relied upon a half-dozen ISIS I-282H loudspeaker systems from QSC Audio Products, to manage front-fill and sound for a VIP seating section onstage.
"Once the main house arrays were hung, we were left with a seating area on the main floor that needed additional reinforcement, as well as seats onstage occupied by church dignitaries requiring their own dedicated audio," Hooper explains. "To manage the main floor, we spread four ISIS I-282H enclosures across the front of the stage. We mounted another pair on stands on either side of the VIP seats. The coverage pattern of these devices was perfect in both applications, plus the low-profile nature of the cabinets kept them well out of sight lines out front."
A two-way, full-range loudspeaker with sleek styling, QSC's ISIS I-282H houses dual 8" LF transducers and a 1" high-output compression driver coupled to a proprietary Advanced Directivity™ 90° x 60° rotatable Waveguide horn section. Capable of being pole-mounted, truss-mounted, or used as a stage monitor, the injection-molded loudspeaker is weather resistant and can additionally be used with a yoke mount to facilitate pan and tilt focusing in either the vertical or horizontal plane.
Hooper adds: "While these cabinets are indeed compact, there's nothing small about the sound you can obtain from them. We fed them a lot of power, and their performance was impressive. They are truly hi-fi, have warm voicing, and good sibilance on the high end."
(Chris Henry)
