LMG brings KARAi to NewSpring Church campuses
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: Following the completion of its main worship centre in 2006, NewSpring Church in South Carolina recently began to establish satellite campuses throughout the region to accommodate its increasing number of attendees, which has now reached nearly 30,000 each week across the HOW’s eight locations.
With an ultimate goal to reach over 100,000 people every Sunday, NewSpring Church puts tremendous emphasis not only on the spoken word – which is streamed live from its Anderson location – but also on high-energy live music at each site, boasting concert tour production values and sound levels.
Pleased with the dV-Dosc loudspeaker system installed in its 2,500-seat home sanctuary seven years ago, the church has recently been commissioning L-Acoustics’ certified provider, LMG Systems Integration to design and install KARAi systems for each of its newest locations. NewSpring’s Columbia and Greenwood campuses, which both opened earlier this year, are the first two worship centres to benefit from the arrays.
The Columbia building is a 1,500-seat sanctuary featuring a house sound system comprised of seven KARAi flown per side, plus a single 12XTi per side for out-fill coverage. Six coaxial 8XTi enclosures are spread across the stage lip for front-fill, with five SB28 subs deployed for low-end. The entire system is driven by a combination of LA8 and LA4 amplified controllers.
Meanwhile, the Greenwood campus utilises a similar system for its 1,200-seat sanctuary featuring six KARAi and one 12XTi per side for out-fill coverage, five 8XTi front-fills, four SB28 subs and a few less amplified controllers.
‘The ceiling of our Greenwood worship centre is less than 5m high, so we had very limited room for arrays, but KARAi fit the space nicely,’ commented NewSpring Church technical director Joel Yates. ‘Even with only six cabinets per side the system is capable of absolutely rock volumes while still producing smooth, consistent coverage. Although the style of music we generally do is worship, it’s often guitar-driven and very heavy on drums so we needed a sound system capable of producing 105dB A-scale while still being clear and transparent. It’s not surprising to hear our worship teams perform cover songs by artists like Fallout Boy, U2, Brad Paisley, even AC/DC, and this system can totally put out the volume we need while maintaining the clarity.
‘KARAi has already proven to be the right choice to standardise on for our newest venues,’ he added. ‘It’s very smooth and natural sounding for spoken word, yet delivers the punch and volume our musical performances require. Plus, it offers some noticeable improvements over its predecessor, such as a much sharper and more predictable dispersion pattern cut-off of 110 degrees, which can be helpful.’
Now, NewSpring and LMG Systems Integration are turning their attention to the church’s newest location, a former Best Buy store in Spartanburg. With its proposed 1,600-seat sanctuary featuring higher 8m ceilings, the plan is to install eight KARAi plus two SB18i per side in addition to the same complement of five SB28, two 12XTi and six 8XTi enclosures found in Columbia.