Phase One of construction was recently completed at the new 38-acre site, which features nearly 95,000sq.ft of worship, education, and commons/fellowship space. Development, design, and construction were handled by Myrick Gurosky & Associates of Birmingham, Alabama. Walthall & Associates managed the acoustical and AV portions of the project, working with in-house Electro-Voice applications engineer Stu Schatz to design the loudspeaker configuration. The PA was installed by Cleveland's GravelRoad Entertainment.
From the church side, overall supervision of the project's technical aspects was handled by media minister Stephen Beasley. "We do three very different worship styles," Beasley says. "We have a very traditional piano, organ, and choir service. We have a very driving contemporary service with a five-piece rock band and additional vocals. And we have a blended service with orchestra and special music features. So, when we began planning for the move to the new facility, it was very clear to us that we needed to listen to a lot of different systems to be sure to find something that met all of our needs.
"We listened to box after box, demo after demo," he says. "We were looking for something with very clear vocals, a rich low-end, and a nice crisp high-end. Overall we wanted a very clean but full sound."
The turning point came during a demonstration at the Electro-Voice 'PA Roundup' event in Houston in March, 2009. "I'd already heard pretty much all the other top brands in both standard and self-powered systems," he recalls, "and at the time we were leaning toward a self-powered system from a different manufacturer. But hearing the Electro-Voice Xi-1183A box was an epiphany. It had the best combination of everything we were looking for. It was smooth, but it had presence. It really just kind of wowed me."
At the time, Beasley says, Electro-Voice had just come out with FIR filters for the Xi-1183A to run on the DSP in Electro-Voice's NetMax audio control processor line. "The FIR filters really help smooth-out the sound," he says. "And the combination of the box, NetMax with the FIR filters, the matching amps, and the IRIS control software - it all adds up to a complete system from an engineering standpoint."
Walthall describes the Electro-Voice system as being "fully capable of supporting well beyond the church's contemporary services, to the point that they could bring in a nationally recognized touring Christian artist and not have to rent a PA system or ask the artist to unload their PA out of the truck. It's a very robust system, and as a conventional loudspeaker system with digital processing it performs exceptionally well."
(Jim Evans)
