The reason I went with RoomMatch becomes clear when you look at the coverage patterns of the boxes. The design was fairly simple a four-box array with a two dual 15” subs for the main floor, and a two-box array with a dual 15” sub for the balcony. Orders were placed, riggers and structural engineers were engaged and we reached out to our friends at Wired Electric to provide the additional AV power and sequencing and low voltage wiring.Īfter a few back and forth trips with structural, we came up with a plan to fly the speakers. By the end of the week, we had a contract signed and a check in hand. Getting back to the office the next week, I did some modeling, sent it to Rick for validation, and worked up a budget. The rest of the crew at Bose told us they could make the deadline work, so we left Orlando with a reasonably well thought out plan. I simply asked, “What would you do in this room?” His response was almost exactly what I was thinking.
I showed some pictures and floor plans to Rick Boring, my technical sales rep at Bose the next day. With 42 coverage patterns in the lineup, it’s possible to almost exactly tailor the coverage of the arrays to the seating area-something that would be critical when we’re trying to avoid energizing all the hard surfaces surrounding the seats. But when they released their RoomMatch product line that all changed. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “No highs, no lows, must be Bose.” And that was true, 10 years ago. Thankfully, we were in Orlando for InfoComm, and we had an appointment with Bose the next day. But, I wanted to talk to the manufacturer first. The more we talked, the more I became confident the solution I was envisioning would work. A line array would give us the distance, but at the expense of putting a lot of energy onto the wood ceiling, which would find its way down to the audience area out of time and out of phase. There was no treatment in the room, and it is more than twice as long as it is wide.
It’s a beautiful room, but all those hard, parallel surfaces make it tough to do clean audioĪ traditional A-Frame building, the peak was high up in the air-over 40’-and the ceiling was all wood. He texted us some pictures of the space and a solution began to form in my mind. There was a big disconnect between what the sound guy heard and what the congregation heard. A big value was evenness of coverage as the current system was not great in that regard, especially with the sound booth being in the balcony. The worship style would be contemporary, but not rock and roll. We talked with him for about 30 minutes, learned about the church, the style of worship they were going for, what their values were and what they desired from their new PA.
Funds had become available to install a new PA, but there was a catch it needed to be installed by the end of July, just over 5 weeks away. There was concern that the existing speaker system was not going to be adequate for the newer worship style they were going for in the newly upgraded space. It was Pastor John who told us that the church had been renovating the sanctuary and it was nearly complete. We didn’t think too much of it until we got into the rental car and started driving toward the hotel when the phone rang. This pastor told Joe he needed help with getting a new PA installed, and fast. Scott got a text from a friend of ours letting him know he just talked to the pastor of his former church. We had just landed in Orlando and were still acclimating to the insanely high humidity of early June. Check out the video below and search the site for more detailed write ups. Over the years, I’ve refined this pretty well and it gives great results every time. I say this mainly to give credit to where credit is due. Some of this is from Stone, some is from me. Several hours later, we headed to bed with just enough time to sleep for a few hours before we had to be back at the conference. Somewhere about hour 6, I asked him about how he set up his broadcast mix. I had been working on some ideas a good seven or eight yeas ago when I got spend the evening in deep discussion with my friend Andrew Stone.
I wrote this up as a four-part series some years back.
As I keep telling more folks about it, it occurred to me that I should do a video that I can send people to. Now, that mix could simply be “broadcast” into the lobby or cry room, but it seems to be an ongoing issue for many people. It seems that almost every week someone reaches out for help with their broadcast mix.