Courtesy of L-Acoustics.
University of Wyoming auditorium
Picking a sound system has been getting a bit more complicated lately. The migration of “rider-friendly” or “rider-ready” PA systems — i.e., brands that are widely accepted by top-tier touring music artists that list them on their contract addenda (aka “riders”) — to the house-of-worship sector has been accelerating in the last several years. That’s due in large part to the fact that church services have taken on more and more of the accouterments of entertainment productions, including elements such as moving-fixture lighting and LED video walls that span entire stages.
Artist endorsements now more important
The two leading rider-ready music-touring brands, d&b audiotechnik, which has systems on the road with Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Muse and others of that caliber, and L-Acoustics (Lorde, Celine Dion, Maroon 5), have both turned their focus to the HOW markets in a big way in recent years. It’s not that any of the artists that take those brands on tour will put a church on their travel schedule; rather, says Marc Lopez, VP/Marketing Americas at d&b audiotechnik, those tours act as validation and proof of concept for decision makers at churches auditioning new sound systems.
“Hearing a d&b system on tour in a concert is a way for both a church’s management and its technical team to experience the system successfully deployed in the a [secular] environment, which provides them with a reference point,” Lopez explains. “The artists who use a [rider-ready] sound system essentially give a church an opportunity to look deeper into that system, helping narrow an initial selection process.”
And that selection process is becoming more complicated every day, as new PA brands from Italy, France, Spain, Canada and other markets look to gain footholds in the U.S.’s rapidly expanding touring and install-sound markets. In the process, some of them are seeking to redefine exactly what rider-ready connotes.
K-array, based in Florence, Italy has had its Firenze line array touring system on the market for some time, but one of its columnar-array systems recently caught the ear of Kanye West, who is using it for his “Sunday Services” nondenominational worship/music events, complete with a 60-person choir on a 45-foot circular stage, at his home in Southern California.
Rusty Waite, president of K-array USA, recently established to manage the company’s sales in the U.S., says marquee music names (and often their increasingly high-profile live-sound mixers, too) can help validate sound systems to technical and non-technical decision makers alike, but they only really help them get a foot in the door. Final decisions on platforms as complex and costly as church sound systems need more in-depth procurement processes.
“Even if a particular sound system is on someone’s contract rider, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right sound system for that church,” he cautions. “Those systems… are all line arrays, and their church may not need a line array at all. A church often doesn’t have enough [space] to make a double-15 [inch] loudspeaker sound good they way an arena does. And just because a company might have a great touring system doesn’t mean that they necessarily make a great installed loudspeaker product. These are the kinds of considerations that system designers and specifiers have to bring up to their house-of-worship clients.”
Rider-friendly sound systems can leverage their technical celebrity into higher prices, and that’s something that churches in particular have to keep in mind. That, combined with a more crowded marketplace with more brands vying for attention, has made overall pricing in this sector more competitive, something churches can benefit from. Lopez acknowledges that but also points out that this dynamic also more sharply underscores the difference between price and value at a time when sound quality is becoming a meaningful metric for churches and their congregations.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing that some PA systems might meet a church’s budget but not meet its expectations,” he says.
Given their celebrity endorsements, rider-ready sound systems do come with what can be considered an estimable pedigree in the pro audio business. At a time when so many sound system products and brands have achieved a vey high degree of sonic and operational quality, it might be that systems associated with major names in the touring business have a leg up, attracting their own marquee touring names in the religious music industry. But that pedigree will likely come with a higher capital cost — note that the brands at the highest levels of the rider-ready totem pole require that their speakers be paired with their amplifiers, too, to assure power matching to achieve optimal results. Buyers will have to weigh a value proposition that’s as perceptual as it is based on math, and the professionals who walk them through that glittering forest of brands will need to be aware of that.
