An education in Danley Sound
Published: WORSHIP
US: For over a century, God’s Bible School and College in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been a fully accredited college, offering its students a well-balanced curriculum together with all the social amenities of the larger colleges in the Buckeye State. On the campus is a 1,000-seat chapel housed within the Knapp Memorial Building, which until recently had an underpowered and semi-functional sound reinforcement system. A new collection of Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers has changed all that.
The musical portions of the services held by GBSC are best described as classical, infused with elements of southern gospel. Apart from the steady accrual of speaker failures in the old system, the school’s music department found the system’s lack of input mixing flexibility to be an annoyance. GBSC’s new department chair also heard the old system’s lack of power, coverage and fidelity.
Audio consultant and engineer Tim Dentler both designed the replacement sound reinforcement system and oversaw its installation. ‘The room is quite large, and the old system relied on a delay ring,’ he explained. ‘Although they are sometimes needed, a delay ring system will always be sonically inferior to a single point system if the single point system can deliver the coverage. I had been following Danley’s innovative loudspeaker technologies for a while, and I saw an opportunity to use its very well-behaved designs to do away with the delay ring.’
Via its manufacturer’s representative, Avcom in Cleveland, Ohio, Danley arranged demos of potential solutions for GBSC. ‘The new moulded horn design SM-60F was perfect,’ said Mr Dentler. ‘It sounded fantastic, had the right coverage pattern, coupled well and came with a surprisingly small price tag. I was also impressed with Danley’s obvious commitment to me as an integrator. They worked with me and had an obvious appreciation for the stresses and demands of a contractor.’ The school completed the installation with three Danley SM-60Fs in a single flown cluster, with two Danley TH-Mini subwoofers tucked into an enclosure under the stage.
Mr Dentler has a long history with Ashly Audio products, and he specified a 3-in by 6-out Ashly Protea 3.24CL processor to handle all input conditioning, routing and speaker management. A Yamaha LS9-32 mixer with a 16-channel expander dramatically increased GBSC’s input count to 48. Reports from the congregation, as well as from the new department chair, are glowing. ‘Over and over, people keep expressing their amazement that so much sound emanates from the three boxes above the stage,’ said Mr Dentler. ‘Of course, we explain that there are subwoofers as well, but that doesn’t diminish the effect. The former dead spots are now happily filled with music. Congregants can hear and understand no matter where they sit.’