Greater Faith becomes one of the first in the US to get Varia
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: Indiana’s Church of the Greater Faith has recently benefitted from a Renkus-Heinz Varia sound system installation for its 700-seat sanctuary, which hosts two Sunday morning services and a third service in the afternoon. The house of worship is reported to be one of the first in the US to invest in a Varia system.
The peaked, metal A-frame structure had long suffered from challenging acoustics, and Jason Ryder, general manager of LA-based Porche Advance Systems noted that efforts over the years to improve the situation only made things worse.
‘They knew they ultimately needed to replace the entire system, but they had been reluctant to do so because they were looking at moving to a larger venue within the next couple of years,’ stated owner Jacob Porche. ‘But with Varia, we were able to design an expandable, flexible system that would work for them now, and become part of their new system later. When they build the new sanctuary, these three cabinets will become the bottom three cabinets in a larger, eight-cabinet array. The fact that this was an investment that could grow with them was a huge plus.’
The new system comprises left and right arrays, each with three Varia cabinets. ‘The top box has a 90 by seven-degree horn pattern, the middle cabinet has the transitional horn that goes from 90 to 120-degrees wide by 15 degrees vertical, and the bottom unit covers 22-degrees vertical by 120-degrees wide,’ explained Mr Porche. ‘That tapered approach enabled us to cover the entire space without resorting to EQ and processing, and to achieve a remarkably flat response from left to right. There is not a single dead spot in the entire sanctuary now.’
‘They were all singing louder and moving with the music – the energy level in the room was fantastic,’ enthused Mr Ryder. ‘One of the church's board members came up to me after a service to thank me,’ added Mr Porche. ‘He said it was the first time he'd ever been able to hear every word of the sermon, and every instrument in the band.
‘With Varia, Renkus-Heinz has developed a system that can truly adapt to any environment,’ he concluded. ‘The system's variable coverage means it can work in any room, and its modular, expandable design means that the system will not become obsolete once the church moves to larger quarters.’