Home or Away, Kenneth Copeland Ministries Depend on Meyer
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For more than thirty years, evangelists Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been spreading the "good news" through the popular Believer's Voice of Victory television program, nearly sixty books and–perhaps most importantly–their own testimony as shared in person. For more than half of that time span, the Copeland's expanding ministry has relied on Meyer Sound to help deliver the message, whether at home in their new home church or on the road in meetings held across the USA or around the world. "Our relationship with Meyer Sound goes back to 1983 or early '84," recalls Tim Page, a longtime ministry associate who now serves as meetings operations manager. "At the time we were looking around for a new system for our touring ministry, and two of us actually hopped a plane and flew around to various locations to audition various different systems. The Meyer Sound loudspeakers the sound quality, the trapezoidal cabinet, and the way we could configure the cabinets for coverage of various shapes and sizes of rooms. We started out with eight MSL-3s and four 650 subwoofers back then, and we've pretty much been with Meyer ever since." Hands Down Decision Following more than a dozen years of exemplary performance on the road, Meyer Sound loudspeakers easily earned a spot among the top choices when it came time to select components for the new Eagle Mountain International Church (EMIC), completed in 1998 at the ministry's headquarters ten miles north of Fort Worth, Texas. Nevertheless, Tim Page and his associates took nothing for granted. "One of the contractors had suggested another make of speakers, so to resolve the issue we had a little shootout down here with Meyer and three other manufacturers," Page recalls. "We did it as a blind listening test, switching back and forth, and we brought in people on the sound crew as well as others in the ministry. We asked them what they liked and why, and for the most part it was a hands-down decision in favor of Meyer." With a capacity of between 1200 and 1600 (depending on seating configuration), Eagle Mountain is not exceptionally large when compared to some of the current mega-churches. Nevertheless, the church plays a key role in the ministries' worldwide outreach efforts: all services are broadcast live on the Internet, and the church regularly plays host to convocations of ministers from supporting churches around the world. Absolute clarity of the spoken word, along with high-impact reinforcement of contemporary music, stood out as cardinal prerequisites for the system at Eagle Mountain. As church construction neared completion in August of 1998, Bill Johnson came on board as the new chief engineer for the Kenneth Copeland Ministries Audio Group. "Before coming here I had worked mostly as a touring engineer with secular rock groups," says Johnson, "and I hadn't really used Meyer products. The first thing I noticed about the new Meyer systems was the way they had so much more 'air' to them. They really paid attention to the high frequency drivers. I particularly like the way you can go all the way to the back of the room and, with the Meyers, you'll still get excellent high frequency coverage. That's one signature I picked up right away." Wide Spread One of Johnson's first tasks at EMIC was to reconfigure the system arrays to account for some last-minute changes in the room's layout. As currently deployed, the self-powered Meyer system utilizes a left-center-right configuration, with two CQ-1 cabinets stacked as a line array in each of the three clusters. The two side clusters also employ a CQ-2 for side fill. The rear corners of the wide room (about 175 feet wide and averaging around 100 feet deep) are covered by a pair of delayed UPA-1P cabinets. Three UPM-1P monitors are aimed to cover the choir, while the praise band takes its separate monitor mixes from a custom in-ear system–a solution devised by Johnson to limit onstage volume. Despite some nagging acoustical problems, Johnson is pleased with the performance and power reserves of the reconfigured Meyer system. "We don't use it nearly to capacity," he admits, "but it's nice to have absolutely clean power no matter the volume." General policy is to limit the level at FOH mix to 95dB-A. Self-Powered Certainty Though the veteran conventionally powered Meyer rig has more than proven its worth over the years, Bill Johnson nevertheless appreciates the advantages offered by the newer self-powered products. "One thing I like about the self-powered series in general," he notes, "is that with everything in one box it makes for very easy blocking when putting a system together on the road. It's just a matter of running the low voltage lines. If you need to increase coverage, you just run a jumper and hang out another box. Also, you don't get the high frequency losses from long speaker lines. We've noticed when we have to put a delay on 300 feet of speaker cable, even though the losses are minimal, you do get them up at 10kHz to 12kHz. It's just not as efficient. But with the self-powered systems, you always know what you'll be getting. I like that a lot." January, 2001 |
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