Princeton Church of the Nazarene installed with Renkus-Heinz Varia
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: Princeton Church of the Nazarene in Florida has been outfitted with a new sound system centered around Renkus-Heinz Varia point source line array speakers as part of a recent upgrade project. The system was specified by Robert Bernecker of Waxahachi, Texas-based SEFI Consulting, and installed by Florida-based Revelation Sound. Mr Bernecker opted for ‘hybrid’ approach, using just three speakers to provide controlled coverage for the entire sanctuary.
‘The old system was just hammering the back wall, creating a lot of slapback, yet it wasn't covering the front seats because it was aimed so high,’ explained Mr Bernecker. ‘It had very wide dispersion and zero control. Varia's modular design enabled me to create a system with the power of a line array but with the pattern control to cover the room very nicely.’
The system at Princeton Church of the Nazarene comprises a single array of three VAX101 enclosures, with different waveguides in each. The bottom speaker houses a 120-degree horizontal guide providing full coverage of the front rows. The middle box uses a transitional waveguide that goes from 120-degrees to 90-degrees, while the top cabinet provides a coverage of 90-degrees to 60-degrees. A legacy subwoofer has been flown behind the Varia system to provide bass extension.
‘Originally, when I looked at this church two years ago I envisioned it would take about 12 horns and a few clever tricks to get the pattern control the room needed,’ Mr Bernecker recalled. ‘But by the time the church was ready to move forward, Renkus-Heinz had released Varia, which gave me the tools to do the same job with better control, using just three boxes and a good DSP system.
‘By putting those three boxes together in that fashion, you get a seamless array with plenty of output,’ he continued. ‘The 10-inch drivers couple together in line array fashion, which is perfect for the lows and low mids. Yet when you get to the highs, each of those horns is serving a distinct area, more like a point source. So it's really a hybrid approach, and exactly what a smaller room like this needs.’
Symetrix DSP is providing control of each speaker’s output to ensure even coverage of the sanctuary. ‘For the long throws at 60- and 90-degrees, I obviously wanted all three of those drivers firing,’ he added. ‘But to keep from blasting the front rows, I used FIR filters to get my pattern control by shading off each box at different frequencies. In essence, we created a variable length array that was still totally phase coherent. We were never able to do that before, and I was very, very pleased with the evenness.
‘It's the kind of thing we do routinely in a 1,500-seat house of worship, using 12-box arrays coupled with some high-end processing. Varia enabled us to bring those same capabilities to smaller churches, giving them incredible bang for their buck’
As for the worship team and congregation, Mr Bernecker reports that their first experience was revelatory. ‘When they walked in, their jaws dropped,’ he recalled. ‘They had dealt with poor coverage for so many years, it was amazing for them to have every corner of the room covered perfectly, and how the PA cuts off right at the platform's edge. They could not believe how much clearer it sounds.’