Church lighting and audio systems installation is no small business. Indeed, for many of the bigger churches there are often thousands of people to cater for and therefore it is important for their facility to cater to a wide variety of needs from general Sunday services, to youth gatherings, to devotionals and special events.
A flexible lighting and audio system is required for churches; one that is powerful, future-proof, and effective enough to make sure that no one leaves feeling like their experience was compromised in any way.

The ACTS Charismatic Church is a thriving, constantly growing congregation which has recently opened new premises in Midrand and the new 2 800-seater auditorium, of course, called for specific audio and lighting requirements. Prosound was the logical choice for the new installation of the staging, audio and lighting systems, as their relationship with the church spanned back five years when they supplied said systems for the church’s previous sanctuary.

Lighting

One of the main goals of the lighting system, as specified by Pastor Peter for the ACTS church, was to facilitate multiple lighting zones, depending on the application of the meeting.

It is no use, for instance, to light the entire auditorium if only a small section of it is being used. Since Prosound was responsible for the previous installation (ETC Source fixtures and trussing were used), they were called upon once again to offer their services for the house lighting design, overseen by Ian Blair, general manager of T&A Lighting, Prosound’s lighting division.
Working closely with the ACTS planning and design team, they constructed custom lighting schematics which specified the individual lighting schemes for each section of the sanctuary. For starters, 103 ETC Source 4 Par Fixtures – 60 with extra wide lenses – were installed, along with a Zero88 Chill 24 x 16A dimmer.

For the stage, the focus was to create broadcast quality lighting. Thirty ETC Source4 Pars and six ETC Source4 fixed focus profiles were implemented and controlled by an ETC Congo Kid lighting console with 48 channels of Zero88 Chill dimmers. Additionally, full trussing was supplied for FOH and an I Light HF Ballast dimmer with DMX cards were installed to control the dimming of the fluorescent lights in the cry room, situated behind several panes of plate glass. Impressively, the ACTS Church Team was always on site to lend a hand with the installation.
Pastor Peter enthusiastically lent a helping hand, often seen brandishing a soldering iron. He has a background in audio, is no stranger to technical happenings and was a huge part of the driving force of this project.


Audio

For the ACTS Church audio system Meyer Sound was selected for its fantastic build quality, reliability and legendary sound. Front of house is covered by 12 Meyer Sound JM1P self-powered enclosures which were selected for three point source arrays – left, centre and right. Despite not being classed as a line array, the JM1P enclosures are designed to be used in either traditional stacked or flown configuration and are thus termed “arrayable loudspeakers’. They have a very accurate and predictable response in both the frequency and dispersion categories and after comparing the predicted response by Meyer Sound’s MAPP online acoustic prediction software to the actual response, it was found to be almost exact. Prosound’s technical director, Mark Malherbe, had a huge hand in configuring the system and he worked very closely with the ACTS planning and design team.

For front fills, four Meyer Sound UPJunior UltraCompact VariO self-powered loudspeakers were selected for their small footprint, and fantastic short throw response. For low frequency reproduction, four ground-stacked (two per side) Meyer Sound 600-HP compact, high power subwoofer enclosures were selected. Each enclosure incorporates dual 15′ cone drivers and is rated to 1200 watts (AES; driven continuously for two hours with a band-limited noise signal having a 6dB peak-to-average ratio) and delivers a peak SPL of 138dB.

A Midas Pro3 with its fantastic sound quality, ergonomic workflow and advanced audio routing and network capabilities was selected for FOH control. Supplementing the Pro3, a DL317 DSP unit was supplied along with a DL251 stage box, supplying 48 send and four return channels. This system can be upgraded to a Pro9 eventually if need be, offering 88 inputs by upgrading the control surface, stage box and DSP without too much expense, which was attractive to the ACTS team.
Finally, system processing comes courtesy of a Midas Galileo 408, which offers four input, eight output operation, complete with a very flexible routing matrix and distributed through a 10/100 Ethernet network.


The wrap

The main goal of any installation is to offer the audience a streamlined, exciting and hiccup-free performance. Each system should be user friendly, easy to operate and deliver the specifications of the client. Given what Prosound has done at the ACTS church and given their previous successes, it is clear they were the right company for the job and delivered a professional and effective result.

By Greg Bester