Meyer Sound News : Meyer Sound MILO Delivers the Message to 55,000 at Nigeria's Faith Tabernacle

Meyer Sound MILO Delivers the Message to 55,000 at Nigeria's Faith Tabernacle

"A congregant approached me after a recent service and said, 'For the first time, I don't have to ask someone what the pastor said during sermons. Everything is so crystal clear."

- Peter Iriah
President, GQAS

With a capacity of more than 55,000, Nigeria's Faith Tabernacle is certainly one of the largest church complexes on the continent, if not the entire world. An affiliate of Living Faith Church Worldwide, Faith Tabernacle is located in Ota, some 50 miles inland from the country's largest city, Lagos.

The tabernacle opened its doors in 1999, but the massive size; high, open roof structure; and highly reflective walls and floor of the sanctuary precipitated acoustical problems that plagued the congregation for years. The situation was finally resolved by Lagos-based GQ Acoustics + Sound (GQAS), who installed a powerful and sophisticated system of 57 self-powered loudspeakers from Meyer Sound.

The road to resolution was long and challenging, according to Peter Iriah, president of GQAS. The church's first attempts at mitigating the echo-laden cacophony experienced by most of the congregation were simply insufficient for the task. "The church installed a smaller system early on," explains Iriah, "but the space was simply too massive, and the system both underpowered and inefficiently designed to effectively meet the requirements of the space."

GQAS knew the problems could be solved, and spent years attempting to address them in planning and discussions with the church. The company's perseverance and professionalism eventually paid off when, in August of 2006, the church invited GQAS to present a proposal for a new audio system.

The layout and distances involved posed tremendous hurdles to uniform coverage. The building's design features a large, hexagonally shaped main seating area with a capacity of 10,000. The hexagon's six sides form three upper-tier seating balconies, representing three distinct coverage areas. The balconies are each now served by an array of six MICA compact high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers, while the central seating area is covered by three more line arrays made up of four MICA cabinets and a single 600-HP compact high-power subwoofer.

Three immense wings, each accommodating 15,000 seats, extend outward from the main hexagon. Each wing employs an array made up of (from top to bottom): one M3D-Sub directional subwoofer, three MILO 60 high-power narrow coverage curvilinear array loudspeakers, three MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers, and a MILO 120 high-power expanded coverage curvilinear array loudspeaker.

The building's open, metal roof extends up to a towering height of 60 meters (197 feet) at its peak. The MILO/M3D arrays in the wings are flown at a height of 20 meters (66 feet), while the MICA hangs sit at 30 meters (98 feet). Two Galileo loudspeaker management systems handle processing for the entire system, and a SIM 3 audio analyzer covers tuning and alignment tasks.

With less than four months allowed for the complex system to be designed, installed, and tuned, the project was extremely challenging. Once under way, though, the installation, plus associated training for local staff, was completed in a mere six days. Iriah points to the support provided by design consultant Dave Dennison, a Meyer Sound associate, as instrumental in meeting the tight deadline. "Meyer Sound's excellent technical support was there for us 100 percent, and that truly made the critical difference that helped this project become a success," Iriah says. "Most manufacturers tend to disconnect at the point of sale, but not Meyer Sound."

Meyer Sound's Intelligent AC proved invaluable in the face of the region's underdeveloped electrical grid. "The self-powered design of Meyer Sound's products is more than a convenience for us," continues Iriah. "Features like universal voltage selection are essential in coping with our sometimes erratic electrical conditions, even though the church uses a 1000 kVA standby generator for the main auditorium."

Although the professional audio industry overall is not highly developed in the region, GQAS employs a highly trained staff with considerable expertise in systems design and installation. As challenging as the system design and installation was for the GQAS team, the process of educating and enlightening the client proved just as significant. "It was difficult introducing technology as unique as Meyer Sound's in an industry that is largely untrained and unprofessional," Iriah says. "Lots of people told us this job could not be done, because a sound system like this has never before been done on such a large scale in this part of the world. But we succeeded against all odds. For me, that makes our success that much sweeter."

Of course, the real bottom line is always the customer's opinion. "My greatest satisfaction is the appreciation (the church officials) are expressing," Iriah states. He recalls Dr. David Oyedepo, founder and presiding bishop of the church, strolling into the auditorium shortly before completion of the installation. "We had just dead-hung the last of the MICA arrays, but had not yet done any tuning of the system," says Iriah. "He sat down at the position he normally occupies during the worship service and asked that we turn the system on. Even in its untuned state, he could immediately hear the difference."

The church's pastor, Isaac Ndubisi, agrees, saying "This is simply fantastic. After six solid years, we have finally conquered our sound problems. Meyer Sound is a winner."

The improvement has not escaped the churchgoers, either. "A congregant approached me after a recent service and said, 'For the first time, I don't have to ask someone what the pastor said during sermons. Everything is so crystal clear,'" Iriah recounts. Comments like this from an everyday member of the church are worth more than a million dollars to me."

The difference was significant enough that Dr. Oyedepo chose to share his opinion with the entire congregation. Addressing an assemblage of over 300,000 via live television and webcast on the final day of the 2006 Shiloh gathering, he stated, "With the purchase of our new Meyer Sound system, the church has made its single largest investment, and it's been well worth it. Meyer Sound is truly the number one loudspeaker manufacturer in the world."

April, 2007