Way back in 1955 American Reformed Church held its first service with just thirty
families in the lovely city of Luverne, located in the extreme southwest corner of
Minnesota. After decades of steady growth, the now vastly-larger congregation
recently completed construction on a new eight hundred-seat state-of-the-art
worship centre. Twin Cities-based Audio Video Electronics (AVE) signed on to the
project mostly after the facility layout was planned and designed. The architect for
the project was Architecture Inc, based in Sioux Falls, SD with Derrick Knight,
Derrick Knight Acoustics, as acoustician.

“American Reformed Church is definitely big into music,’ said Stefan Svard, owner
and president of AVE. “They have a progressive, contemporary worship style, but
their old sanctuary had a distributed system that didn’t have a lot of impact. They
were looking forward to getting a great sound system with their new worship
centre, and it really helped that they invited us to the project early in its
development.’ Citing superior sound quality, pattern control, and amp-channel-
saving passive crossovers, AVE specified Danley Sound Labs SH-60 and SH-95
loudspeakers.

“I’ve been a fan and supporter of Tom Danley’s designs for a long time,’ said Svard.
“At American Reformed Church, we needed great pattern control to deliver great
speech intelligibility. Moreover, we could close-pack the Danley boxes with the
assurance that they would operate acoustically like a single point source, that is,
without any comb filtering that would mess with the system’s clarity and fidelity.
The Danley design was also cost effective – where other manufacturer’s boxes
require bi- or tri-amplification, each efficient Danley box only needs a single amp
channel.’

AVE gave American Reformed Church a stunning stereo sound reinforcement system
comprised of two Danley clusters. Each cluster contains two Danley SH-60s for
main coverage and a single Danley SH-95 for down fill. A Yamaha LS9 console
provides the necessary user control, with QSC processing and amplification
providing the back-end support. “Their budget didn’t leave room for subwoofers,’
explained Svard. “Nevertheless, the SH-60s provide respectable low end by
themselves.’ Another nice feature of the system is a client-inspired trough that runs
the length of the stage. Paneling covers the trough, and small holes allow cables to
seemingly disappear into the stage floor. “It’s an usually-clean looking stage,’ said
Svard.

The LED lighting, designed and installed by Architecture Inc., is stunning inside, as
well as outside. In the evening, the large cross behind the stage is illuminated by
holes in the wall, which are niched with recessed lighting. That same lighting
provides a striking visual of the church wall from the outside, as well. During the
day, those same holes allow sunlight to stream in around the cross. Two rear-
projection systems flank the cross and provide bold visuals to accompany the
church’s impactful sound reinforcement.