Spartanburg, SC (December 13, 2019)—Founded 31 years ago, Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church outside Spartanburg, South Carolina, recently moved to a new multi-venue facility with a 2,200-seat main auditorium and other worship spaces. Ensuring that it makes the most of the new capacity, the Church—locally referred to as Church at the Mill—brought in sound system integrator XL Mediaworks (Columbia, SC) to design a new audio system that ultimately was based around d&b audiotechnik Soundscape software and loudspeakers, and Allen & Heath consoles.
At the beginning of the project in 2017, XL Mediaworks originally proposed a d&b V-Series system with a trio of Allen & Heath dLive digital audio consoles. With the recent release of the d&b Soundscape system, Jerry Temple and David Seaford from XL Mediaworks invited The Mill`s Executive Pastor, Ken Fisher, to attend a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape demonstration at a nearby church.
Canadian Church Gets Soundscape Installation
“After personally experiencing the huge difference in audio source representation that Soundscape offers,” said Temple, “Pastor Fisher immediately recognized the worship experience benefits, and we decided that the d&b Soundscape approach was the way we needed to go.”
The main auditorium design presented acoustical challenges due to it being an overall fan-shaped space, with a sloped lower bowl and raked seating in the upper sections.
“The room is very wide with relatively low ceilings,” explained Seaford. “This posed some challenges in obtaining good audio coverage without compromising sight lines to the main video screen and two side video screens. Long line arrays would typically be used, but they would block the screen view for many audience members. A distributed system would be the next choice, but with this approach, the audience tends to localize sound to the nearest speaker, not to the presenter or performer; this is where the d&b Soundscape system could solve the problems.”
Using a combination of speaker placement and source-position information, the d&b En-Scene software algorithm utilizes the processing power of the DS100 signal engine to sonically reinforce the image of what is on stage by harmoniously localizing individual sources precisely as they are seen.
“Church at The Mill could not be more pleased with the final result,” stated Pastor Fisher. “The d&b Soundscape solution clearly has the ability to create an intimate setting even in a sanctuary of over 2,200 seats.”
XL Media • www.XLmediaworks.com
d&b audiotechnik • www.dbaudio.com
