BROADWAY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH UPGRADES TO MARTIN AUDIO
Bowling Green, KY––CCI Solutions recently completed an audio-video-lighting renovation for the Broadway United Methodist Church that included a complement of Martin Audio CDD-LIVE speakers and CSX-LIVE subwoofers.
Duke DeJong, Vice President of Sales and Integration for CCI, describes the space as “a more traditional sanctuary which exists in addition to a larger, more contemporary primary worship area nearby on the campus. “The room seats about 300 with a fairly sloped ceiling that’s 30 feet from the peak to the floor and about 100 feet from the edge of the platform to the back of the room. It has challenges such as a wooden ceiling and lots of hard corners.
“They needed a sound system for speech and a traditional style of music which includes choir and acoustic instruments such as a grand piano, acoustic guitars, a harp and small orchestra. However, the room was designed to meet several needs because they also use this space for different youth and weekday activities with more contemporary worship music, which explains why we went heavier on the subwoofers.
The new PA sounds amazing, it’s like night and day. The coverage is tremendous, you can’t tell where it transitions from front to back and left to right."
“The sound system consists of three pairs of CDD-LIVE 8’s mounted on the ceiling, ”Mike Sessler, Project Lead for CCI Solutions, explains, “a pair downstage, a delay pair about halfway back and a pair out in the foyer to match the experience when there’s overflow. There’s a CSX-LIVE 118 sub mounted in the center downstage and another CSX-LIVE 118 midway back for delay because the room is pretty long and the modeling indicated that it made more sense than going heavier in front and pushing the sound to the back of the room. There’s a single CDD-LIVE 8 for choir fill that’s hung downstage in front the projector.”
Asked about the video and lighting renovation, Mike reports, “everything had to be brighter because there’s so much natural light in the room. The lighting system is now a Chauvet LED system and the video includes a Hitachi laser projector in front and a Hitachi LCD projector in the rear with a DA-LITE 65” x 116” motorized screen.
“As it turns out, we’re really happy with the way the Martin Audio system sounds, which is not surprising. It provides uniform coverage throughout the space. The differential dispersion technology––covering wide up front and narrowing out towards the back––is really a huge benefit for our design.”
Broadway United’s Production Pastor Louis Tagliaboschi and audio engineer Joel Christian also weigh in. Asked about their original PA, Louis says, “the church had a 25-year old system that couldn’t deliver what they were asking of it. They wanted better clarity without room noise, audio system noise and electrical noise.
“The Martin Audio system sounds extraordinary. It’s like going from not having a PA to a truly high-quality PA and the whole system is user-friendly. To have such clean-sounding speakers is great for our volunteers because they can easily operate the system without too much mixing and equalization. We launched the system on an Easter Sunday with three services, full choirs, multiple speakers and soloists, and the pastors and congregants could immediately tell the difference. They were blown away. And since then, we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about how good the room sounds, not just from our church but visitors from other churches.”
Joel echoes the pastor’s comments: “The new PA sounds amazing, it’s like night and day. The coverage is tremendous, you can’t tell where it transitions from front to back and left to right. We were having problems with people hearing the pastor in terms of the timbre of his voice but the speakers made that all go away. Running everything off the Dante network has given us a lot more flexibility. Now we can bring in the audio channels from our service in the larger worship space into this one and that’s been very helpful.”
Summing up, Duke adds, “The PA sounds great, we love the Martin Audio CDD speakers. There’s never been a project where we weren’t happy with those afterwards.”