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When Northland Community Church of Longwood (Orlando), Florida, purchased their current sanctuary in 1985, the church's sound crew realized they faced a challenge. Their new hall was a former roller rink with hardwood floors and a barrel-vaulted ceilinga type of building notorious for difficult acoustics.
Over the years, the church's congregation grew. Attendance at Sunday services rose from 150 people in 1985 to 5000 in 1995. Recognizing the need for intelligible speech and clear music for what was now one of the twenty fastest growing churches in the country, Tim Tracey, the church's Worship Director, began meeting with architects, sound designers, and salesmen. Nearly everyone he met with told him the same thing: the church's architecture was impossible to work with. The church would have to remodel the entire hall, replacing the hall's vaulted ceiling and wooden beams with a structure more suitable for amplified sound.
Then one day Tracey met Bill Platt, a sound designer well known for his work at Disney World, and a member of the church¹s congregation. "What I heard from Bill was completely different from what I heard from everyone else," says Tracey. "Bill said that we didn't need to remodel the sanctuary at all. He had created successful sound systems in much more difficult venues than this. He said all was needed was the right design and the right sound system."
In late 1995, the church extended the hall, adding a new stage and more seating. In November, while the stage was under construction, they installed a new, state-of-the-art sound system designed to provide intelligible sound to every seat in the hall. The new system features Meyer Sound loudspeakers and controllers, aligned using SIM® System II.
The hall's main sound system consists of two MTS-4 Self-Powered Loudspeakers installed left and right on the stage, a center cluster of three UPA-2Cs flown above the stage, and a frontfill system consisting of six UPM-2Cs installed in the top row of steps running along the stage front. Each MTS-4 is a fully integrated unit with drivers and horns to handle high and low frequencies without additional subwoofers.
"Bill's design has proven itself," says Tracey. "We've overcome obstacles that we thought we couldn't overcome. The system is performing very well."
Tracey points out that the system is used for a wide range of material. "The content of our services changes constantly, ranging from intimate songs of praise to dramatic monologues to show tunes from a show such as Les Misérables that we might use to illustrate a point we're making. In some ways, it's like a different venue every weekend. The new system is working well in all these settings. It's bringing out the best in our singers and musicians."
Todd Herrbach, Technical Director for the church, shares Tracey's enthusiasm for the Meyer system. "The MTS-4s provide a powerful left-right system for music," he says. "We're using the cluster for additional vocals and speech. The dynamic range of the system is incredible. The musicians are confident now that everything they play will be heard."
Steve Groves, the church's Technical Specialist, is familiar with advanced sound systems, having worked at Disney World for five years. But he was surprised and impressed by Meyer Sound's new audio technology.
"The MTS-4s are performing surprisingly well," he says. "The damping control is tight and well-defined. And the low-end on the MTS-4s is impressive."
Groves likes the integrated design of the self-powered loudspeakers. Because they include their own amplifiers, the MTS-4s don't require additional electronics or amplifiers. "This design takes away the guesswork of configuring systems," he says.
"The sound of the MTS-4s is very natural. I have to say that with these new loudspeakers, Meyer Sound is at the front of the audio industry."
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