The quiet stage
Published: WORSHIP
Any large church seeking to achieve a high quality sound reinforcement solution within its main sanctuary must eventually wrestle with the question of how many decibels it’s producing on stage. It is one thing to acquire a powerful, high-end system, but quite another to deliver real clarity through control. Deok Soo Lim, chief sound engineer at South Korea’s Wooridle Church, is on a mission to do just that.
Located in the Pangyo district of Yongin City, near Seoul, the church recently turned 10 years old, having originally started in the gymnasium of Seoul’s Hwimoon High School. As is the case with so many churches in South Korea, the church rapidly grew in numbers to the point that its membership now stands at approximately 5,000 worshippers. Not surprisingly, it has now moved into its own dedicated building, with the high school remaining as a satellite location.
The current church boasts the kind of large auditorium-style sanctuary that has become the norm in Seoul. Seating approximately 2,500 people at any one time, the room comprises a large stage overlooked by an expansive balcony with ground-floor seating beneath. Any acoustic issues that may have been created during the sanctuary’s construction were dealt with early on. ‘The acoustic performance of the main sanctuary was a priority for us right from the beginning,’ explains Mr Lim. ‘The interior design and the acoustic design were linked – we always spoke about the importance of the acoustics. We came out with a good result.’ The sanctuary now has a reverberation time, he adds, of ‘0.9s’.
With so much effort having gone into the sound of the room itself, it’s no surprise that the audio solutions the church has acquired are of the highest calibre. Wooridle worked alongside Sound Solution to create the best possible installation for Mr Lim and his volunteers to use. The result comprises a muscular front of house system based on a left-right configuration of 10 per-side Adamson Y10 enclosures powered by a combination of Lab.gruppen FP10000Q and FP7000 amplifiers with six LM26 processors for loudspeaker management. Both hangs also boast two Spektrix Wave down-fills per side powered by an FP10000Q amplifier, while two flown T21 subs per-side are driven by four FP7000 amps for low-end.
Elsewhere in the sanctuary, Point 8-P enclosures have been deployed in a variety of positions including six as apron fills, a further six as under-balcony delays, two covering the choir and a final six providing coverage to the upper balcony area. All are powered by Lab.gruppen C16:4 amps.
The front of house position – located at the front of the balcony – is no less impressive, with a Midas Pro9 digital console used for front of house mixing accompanied by a Pro2C as a back-up mixer. A third Midas desk – a Pro2 – can also be found in the church’s broadcast facility, from which it transmits services online and to its satellite campus with engineers listening closely through Genelec 8040A monitors.
Even Wooridle’s microphone selection is a who’s who of leading brands, including Shure UR4D and ULX channels providing wireless coverage, DPA 4011C mics suspended over the stage and d:vote 4099s used to capture musicians’ performances, plus Beyerdynamic handhelds, AKG and Sennheiser drum-mics and multiple models from Schoeps.
If that sounds like a lot of power at Mr Lim’s fingertips, then he’s suitably proud of the system and the church it serves. ‘This is actually the fourth church I have worked for as chief engineer,’ he explains. ‘At my previous churches, I used to feel like I was just at work, doing my best but still only fulfilling a role. This church is different. Wooridle is more than a job. Even when I am on the console I now consider myself a worshipper, not just an engineer.’
He reserves particular praise for the Pro9 console at front of house. The church presents three services every Sunday, and while Mr Lim mans the desk for the first two, a volunteer steps up for the third, which is louder and more youthful in its appeal. ‘I used to use a different brand so I when I came to the Pro9 I hadn’t had much experience with it, but as I’ve used it I’ve come to really like it. I’ve found that it’s very intuitive.’
For all of the technology within the church, however, Mr Lim is perhaps most pleased with his own addition to its arsenal of audio equipment. In an effort to apply as much control as possible to the louder portions of Wooridle’s Sunday services, he decided to invest in personal monitoring solutions for the church’s worship bands. His choice of brand was myMix.
‘I’ve used other personal monitoring systems in the past – I’ve heard about all of them,’ he explains, ‘but I don’t think I would change away from MyMix now. I’ve been telling the engineers at the satellite campus, which is still using monitor speakers, to use myMix instead. I really like the sound quality. It has a wide dynamic range. I didn’t have much information about myMix until this year’s Koba show but when I heard the system I really liked it so I immediately chose it for my church.’
At the moment Wooridle’s worship bands have all converted from stage monitors to the personal mixing system, with eight myMix units having been sourced from the South Korean distributor Soundus. In addition, an IEX-16L 16-channel input expander has been installed into the church’s racks alongside a myMix Control interface for remote control via a web browser.
‘It took some time for the instrumental team to become comfortable with the idea,’ recalls Mr Lim. ‘The musicians weren’t used to the idea of personal monitoring. But now they have had some time to become used to it, they like it very much.’
That’s no small compliment considering one of the musicians in question is a high profile TV producer working on music-related programming. But not all of the performers are yet to be convinced. ‘The singers are still using regular monitors,’ adds the chief engineer. ‘I actually want them to use personal monitoring systems as well to achieve a quieter sound on stage. But they are not quite comfortable with it yet.’
He is also planning on expanding his use of the units. ‘We haven’t been using the recording function yet but I have been thinking about how we could make use of it. We rehearse on Saturdays and we have to power up the entire system – everything in the main sanctuary – in order to be able to rehearse. I’m thinking of using the recording function on myMix so that we can have a virtual rehearsal. It would be a much simpler set-up. We could run it from a single SD card.’
From the biggest line array enclosure to the smallest personal mixer, Wooridle Church has been equipped with the kind of equipment that will allow it to grow even more as it enters its second decade. Mr Lim – thoughtful, enthusiastic and most of all proud to serve the church he believes in so deeply – is eager for the challenge. ‘There are so many volunteers at the church who work really passionately,’ he says. ‘They’re not getting paid at all but they do it with joy. That has inspired me.’ As the chief engineer takes control of the sound on his stage, he is delivering that message with increasing clarity.