Sun Valley Church looks to the future with Martin Audio

WORLD: A Martin Audio MLA Compact sound system has been installed into the Tempe campus of Sun Valley Community Church in Gilbert, Arizona. Sun Valley Tempe merged with Bethany Church two and half years ago, rapidly expanding the congregation and at the same time inheriting a large campus and 1,300-seat auditorium that was severely lacking in technical capabilities. The installation was carried out by Ed Cripples from Clark, Jon Hunsacker and Kevin Hull from SVGG, and a team of riggers from Clearwing.

‘The audio system was old and primarily designed for natural speech, orchestra and choir reinforcement in an acoustic setting,’ explained Eric Johnson, technical director for Sun Valley.  ‘That, plus the building is a complex geometrical design – basically a five-sided pentagon with a seven-sided auditorium that’s about 160-degrees wide – has a raked floor, many complex angles and no parallel surfaces. Needless to say, this presented a real challenge when it came to choosing a new loudspeaker system.

‘The original system had worked for many years, but changing times, culture and styles made us realise that it no longer served our purposes for electric rock and roll style music,’ continued Mr Johnson. ‘We decided on a major renovation that involved changing the seating from traditional pews to modern theatre style seats and going from a totally carpeted floor to carpeting only in the aisles. We also reduced the size of the stage, pulling back the downstage edge by about 3.5m in addition to upgrading the lighting and audio system.

‘There was also a real concern as to whether or not we could put in a system that would adequately reinforce rock and roll without overwhelming the live-sounding room,’ he added. ‘So we discussed acoustically treating the room, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or completely tearing down the ceiling and remodelling the room from the inside, which wasn’t feasible either.’

Having first heard an MLA system during a demo several years ago, Mr Johnson explained that he ‘had an idea of what the technology was about’, and ‘was really impressed with what I heard’.

‘The possibility of MLA and the MLA Compact system specifically, led us to realise that the technology would allow us to precisely control the audio output and put the energy onto the seats while keeping it off the ceilings and walls. So that’s the direction we decided to pursue.’

The installed system for the auditorium consists of nine MLA Compact enclosures per side in L/R hangs, with seven DSX subs arranged in an arc formation along the downstage edge. Two WT3 speakers were positioned for extreme left and right outfill, alongside six DD6 speakers for front fill. Martin Audio MA3.0 and MA2.8Q amplifiers power the system and a Merlin Processor manages the outfills and front fills in addition to communications between the speakers. The rest of the system consists of a Soundcraft MH2 40-channel console situated at FOH, and Sennheiser Evolution Series wireless and DPA microphones.

With the project completed, a Palm Sunday service provided an ideal opportunity to debut the new system.

‘It was an overwhelming success,’ stated My Johnson. ‘Ed Crippen was there for the whole weekend, which included rehearsals and the first service. He was taking measurements for the service and one of the things we discovered during the sermon was that real-time intelligibility readings were off the charts. He had never seen intelligibility readings that high. The first time our pastor Chad Moore, who uses hearing aids, stepped on the stage and spoke through the microphone he said, "I can finally hear myself".

‘When we went to the portion with just the pastor speaking downstage, we averaged 72dB over a 10 minute window,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘Not only was it loud enough, it was incredibly clear and you felt as if he was talking right in front of you. It’s unheard of to put a message out at that volume and not suffer any fatigue because it’s not loud enough.’

Mr Johnson noted that the overall process of assembling the system took the better portion of a year and required that he put the installer and speaker company together because: ‘Clark was not a Martin Audio dealer and I wanted MLA Compact in the building. Ed and I attended an MLA training class in Las Vegas and that’s when he really lit up and got what the system was all about. It turned out to be a full-fledged collaboration between Sun Valley, Clark and Martin Audio.’

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