World Changers Church upgrades with Powersoft K3

Published: August 15, 2013 WORSHIP

WORLD: World Changers Church International (WCCI) has upgraded the amplification system in its World Dome in College Park, GA, with 22 Powersoft K3 power amplifiers featuring the proprietary AESOP (AES Ethernet Simple Open Protocol) networking functionality.

The 8,500-seat World Dome, located in a suburb of Atlanta and built at a cost of $18 million in 1995, serves a congregation of approximately 30,000 members. The main PA is a flown LCR L-Acoustics V-Dosc system with under-hung dV-Dosc front fills, plus SB28 subwoofers. ‘The PA has awakened like a brand new system,’ said WCCI staff audio engineer Hall Williams, who has previously toured with a variety of gospel, jazz and reggae artists. ‘Everyone has commented that the sound is a lot cleaner, a lot brighter, a lot fuller. There is just something about the definition of the bass notes, and the clarity of the system. It sounds really, really good.’

The WCCI staff engineers had previously suspected that some of the drivers had failed in the system, but the sound problems persisted even after a number of components were replaced. ‘That's when I called Roy Drukenmiller at Rock ‘n’ Road and said, bring me a couple of power amps,’ said Mr Williams.

‘We upgraded the consoles about two years ago to DiGiCo: an SD7 at front of house and an SD8 at monitors,” says Mr Drukenmiller, president of Rock ‘n’ Road Audio, the sound production rental, sales and systems integration company that supplied the Powersoft amplifiers. ‘As they made the rest of the system better they found that it was still not working to its full potential. So the next step was to either replace the speakers or the amplifiers. Jim Green from Quest, the southeast rep for Powersoft, and I went down there with two K3 amplifiers and did a quick demo. All of a sudden the system sounded much better.

‘There are lots of manufacturers making small, lightweight amplifiers now, but audio quality is what we're looking for in our world. In this day and age, with the rush to the bottom, Powersoft defies that trend.’