BOLINGBROOK, ILLINOIS: For the first time in four years, Easter Sunday services this past April at Jubilee Baptist Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois,
were music to the ears of the more than 1,000 parishioners who packed the sanctuary.
Gone were the sights of people straining to hear and the pastor grimacing as microphone feedback mounted, and the sound of music and speech bouncing around an acoustically challenged building. New on the scene, however, were
loudspeakers from Sound Physics Labs, Glenview, Illinois, an addition that
almost single-handedly made years of chronic sound problems at the church
almost magically disappear.
Recommended and installed by GMK, a Chicago-based systems integration firm,
SPL triktraps, runts and td1 subwoofers combine to produce a "night and
day
difference" in the sound quality, according to Chris King, a co-owner of
GMK.
"After helping the church patch together a system four years ago that
would
work until they could afford an upgrade, we finally demo'd the SPL speakers
last year," King says. "The church gave us a purchase order right
after the
demo with the goal being to have the new system in place by Easter."
As it turned out, both GMK and SPL delivered. Easter Sunday services at the
church, which is heavily oriented to contemporary services featuring loud
live music, were the most dynamic in years, King says.
King's solution consisted of four SPL trik-trap speakers hung in pairs from
the ceiling, 15 feet off the floor; two SPL-runts flown directly over the
choir serving as choir monitors; and two SPL-td1 subwoofers, positioned on
the floor in front of the riser. Working in tandem with overflow
loudspeakers from another manufacturer, the SPLs have produced more focused
sound and have eliminated severe feedback and coverage problems.
"This new stereo system does a much better job than the center cluster
system they had before, which wasn't providing the needed coverage and was
producing a lot of feedback," King noted.
The key to the SPLs' effectiveness, King says, is their tight pattern
control. Designed to provide coverage for most of the seating areas, the
SPL-triktrap pairs deliver outstanding intelligibility by keeping extraneous
amplified sound off the highly reflective ceiling and wall areas. The
SPL-td1 subwoofers, meanwhile, deliver a low-end that the church couldn't
approach in the previous audio system configuration.
"As a Southern Baptist congregation, Jubilee can get pretty rocking with
a
full band, and they want to be able to have the bass be heard," King says.
"In the old setup they didn't have any room for subs. But with these compact
td1s, the church is able to get a lot of extended low-frequency that's very
clean with minimal distortion in not much space."
Like the trik-traps, the SPL-runts deliver outstanding pattern control, an
important feature given the challenges the church had faced in
intelligibility for the choir. "The runts fire right down at the choir
and
there's no worry about them spilling into the congregation area because of
their pattern control," he says. "Now it's much easier for the choir
to hear
everything. Plus, now the pulpit mics and wireless lav mics can be turned on
without worry about feedback."
Combined with minor acoustical treatments that were installed to help
mitigate sound reflection problems, the SPL speakers have given Jubilee
Baptist a reason to look forward to Sunday services with excitement rather
than trepidation.
Sound Physics Labs patented trik-trap and runt
loudspeakers rock Jubilee Baptist Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois.
"The SPLs pack a lot of punch and they overcame a lot of sound problems,"
says King, who's used the same complement of SPLs in numerous other church jobs.
"Now, Jubilee is able to have the choir and soloists be heard over the
music and be understood at the same time, with added volume, but also increased
intelligibility."
Sound Physics Labs is the parent company of ServoDrive, Inc. ServoDrive
manufactures the industry benchmark BassTech7 and ContraBass subwoofers.
Sound Physics Labs is responsible for the complete line of Unity
loudspeakers.
Servo Drive
Sound Physics Labs
