Located in the greater Knoxville area, Clear Springs Baptist Church is a thriving house of worship where the term ‘Family of Faith’ is used to describe the wonderful relationships shared by all who worship there. The church recently completed construction of its new campus and, to ensure the best sound reinforcement capability for their sanctuary, they elected to deploy a sound system drawn from the TrueLine and Wave Series catalogs of PreSonus Commercial Division of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Orangeburg, South Carolina based Templeton Sound Systems, a firm that specialises in the: design and installation of church audio, video recording, and multimedia systems, was contracted to handle the design and installation of the new sound reinforcement system at Clear Springs Baptist Church. Michael W. Templeton, President of Templeton Sound Systems, discussed the project and his reasons for choosing the PreSonus WorxAudio TrueLine XL1i-P and V5-M line array systems.
“Clear Springs Baptist Church is a vibrant organisation,” Templeton reports. “Per Mike Tipton, the church’s Music Minister, their services can best be described as having a pronounced Southern Gospel style of music mixed with an old country style of Baptist worship. Simply put, this is a big church with a small church feel. They use both a choir and a live instrument ensemble consisting of: piano, organ, bass, drums, guitars, strings, and winds. Services are very lively!”
Templeton reports that, in their old sanctuary, there were numerous challenges in terms of the sound. “Coverage was very uneven, with numerous dead spots,” he said. “Complicating matters further, the sound was typically much louder in the front and almost non-existent in the rear of the room. Between the dead spots and the hot spots, intelligibility suffered a lot.”
To ensure this scenario was not repeated in the new sanctuary, Templeton and his crew deployed eighteen WorxAudio TrueLine XL1i-P compact line arrays with nine elements each for the left and right hangs. To ensure the choir and other performers onstage could hear clearly, a WorxAudio X2i-P/D self-powered, two-way, high efficiency, ultra-compact line array loudspeaker system was flown over the choir/stage area. For low frequency support, four WorxAudio TrueLine TL218SSi-P dual 18-inch sub bass enclosures were incorporated into the setup. These powered subwoofers are placed in recessed enclosures across the front of the stage area.
Rounding out the loudspeaker setup, Templeton and his team positioned three TrueLine V5M ultra-compact line array enclosures across the front of the stage area for front fill purposes and another four V5M enclosures were deployed for under-balcony fill. Additionally, two WorxAudio Wave Series 8M 2-way, high efficiency floor monitors further ensure clear sound for those on the stage. Crown amplifiers drive the non-powered loudspeakers.
“This is a very clean-looking installation,” says Templeton. “The two XL1i-P loudspeaker clusters are supported by 1.5-inch pipe used with the adjustable WorxAudio TrueAim Grid. There are no chains and no visible wires to distract from the aesthetics of the space.”
When queried about those attributes that really made the WorxAudio loudspeaker systems the best choice for this project, Templeton offered the following thoughts. “The XL1i-P loudspeaker has an unusually broad 160° horizontal dispersion pattern. This ensures broad, even coverage that simply isn’t matched by competing loudspeaker systems. Because of this unique capability, we were able to provide excellent coverage for the over 800 seat congregation without cluttering the space with a lot of enclosures.”
Before shifting his focus to other business matters, Templeton offered these parting thoughts, “This sound system is top notch in every way and that includes the quality of support services we received from PreSonus’ Commercial Audio Division. Since the first service in May 2016, we’ve received numerous glowing reports from our client. They’ve described it as a ‘world-class system of amazing clarity with plenty of headroom.’ This is absolutely the best-sounding system in the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area and the surrounding counties.”
