With roots as the First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., Cross Church has invited Arkansasians to worship since the mid-1800s. Today, with four campuses throughout Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri, including the main campus in Springdale, technology has played a prominent role in the church’s successful multi-campus strategy. In fact, Cross Church has a history of technical innovation.
As early as 2001, when the church added its first remote campus, technical teams were experimenting with live video over fiber and began streaming recorded broadcasts shortly thereafter. “Being leaders in innovation for worship is oftentimes challenging,” says Leo McGriff, director of technical services for Cross Church, “but it’s also very rewarding.” He cites examples of how pioneering live video has helped the church to grow by sharing its pastor with others, and how being one of the first churches in the state to use IMAG helped to elevate worship. McGriff has witnessed the church push technology boundaries for over 25 years, so it came as no surprise when he and his team were charged with finding the best new audio system for the recently remodeled, 2,400-seat sanctuary at the Cross Church Springdale campus.
Supporting Worship
Contemporary praise services at Cross Church’s main campus feature a praise team with 6-10 voices, along with a five- to eight-piece praise band including, bass, drums, guitars and keyboards. Choirs as large as 45-60 voices are often added on stage, along with brass and string sections. Modular stage design maintains sightlines to all the performers and features Wenger portable staging elements and a custom-built drum cage. To enhance worship and live performance, services at Springdale have featured IMAG since the early 1990s. Today, in addition to prepared video content from ProPresenter, media and live video from four Panasonic HD studio cameras and a versatile Panasonic PTZ camera is switched with Ross Carbonite and Analog Way gear and delivered via three Panasonic projectors. Left, right and center screens on stage provide clear, bright images that reach every seat. Springdale’s moving praise services require superior production support and sound reinforcement.
“To move us forward, a great sounding system that would provide uniform coverage was what we were looking for—a system that could give us great sound from side-to-side and top-to-bottom.” Leo McGriff, Director of Technical Services, Cross Church, Springdale, AR.
However, even before remodeling, attaining good sound with consistent audio coverage of the wide sanctuary presented a significant challenge for McGriff’s technical staff. The fan-shaped auditorium seats 2,400, with 750 seats in an expansive balcony, 300 seats in each of the room’s dramatic side “spillways” that flow down from the balcony height to the floor, and five sections of seating on the floor. The church’s old audio system was a left-center-right monaural configuration installed at the last room remodeling in 2002. Even with significant DSP treatment, the old system still left some seats in the sanctuary with less than optimal sound. “To move us forward, a great sounding system that would provide uniform coverage was what we were looking for,” recalls McGriff. “A system that could give us great sound from side-to-side and top-to-bottom.”
Audio Challenges
To find the best solution, McGriff brought in audio experts Diversified, headquartered in Kenilworth, N.J., and audio design engineer Scott Clark to assess the situation and make recommendations. According to Clark, the biggest design challenge was to find a solution that was powerful but also relatively compact so the sight lines to the screens from the balcony would be maintained. “The old system was a point source system,” he reports, “and the church did not want to go that direction for the new system. I agreed, and that meant finding a line array solution that would provide the large vertical coverage necessary without getting too long.”Diversified arranged an off-site demonstration of the Bose RoomMatch array loudspeakers for McGriff and his team. “It was a good demonstration,” recalls McGriff, “in a difficult room that included a large brick surface on one side. The system performed well and provided nice coverage, even in that tough room, but we weren’t sold on reproduction of the low mids.” Diversified recommended that McGriff audition the new Bose ShowMatch system and set up a demonstration of the more compact, high-powered ShowMatch DeltaQ array speakers at Springdale. “Even with a single hang and the older RMS218 subs, coverage was amazing,” recalls McGriff. As others were pulled into the room, all agreed that both the coverage and audio quality of the newer Bose system were impressive. “The Bose ShowMatch fit the bill perfectly,” recalls Clark.
System Design
Diversified and McGriff worked closely with Bose’s engineer, Thomas Tyson, who used Bose Modeler room acoustic simulation and field mapping software along with the ShowMatch Array Design Tool to design a new system and accurately predict its acoustic performance in the sanctuary. An additional consideration for system design, specific to Springdale, was to keep the hangs as light as possible to minimize stress from hang points attached to the roof structure.
“The audio is extremely clear and present, with nothing in it that sounded distant. Only minimal eq is required to get the sound we want.” Leo McGriff, Director of Technical Services, Cross Church, Springdale, AR.
To maximize audio clarity and coverage in the sanctuary, the team decided on a monaural system employing four array hangs with the two inner arrays of 10 ShowMatch modules being dedicated to covering floor seating and center balcony area while two outer arrays of eight ShowMatch array modules cover side seating areas and the balcony. “The height of the array hangs was critical in covering the hard-to-reach balcony seats and allowed for the removal of 14 balcony fills speakers,” says McGriff.For the Springdale sanctuary, a combination of 36 ShowMatch array modules with 5-, 10- and 20-degree vertical dispersions were used and configured with 70- and 100- and 110-degree horizontal waveguides to provide the precise variations in coverage needed to cover seating areas. “Wave guides were easy to change,” recalls McGriff, “and allowed for precise coverage we needed to keep sound off the walls and on seats.” Purely for audio imaging, Six Bose RoomMatch RMU206 front fill speakers were installed to localize sound to the stage for the closest seats.In all, 66 boxes were installed, including 24 ShowMatch SMS118 high-output, single-18-inch woofers that extend the system’s response down to 29 Hz. 16 subs were flown in a 4x4 cardioid configuration above the stage to keep the bass energy focused on the audience and away from the stage. An additional eight subwoofers were installed on the floor in concrete “tombs.” According to McGriff, the subs on the floor make a significant difference, adding a solid tightness to the system.Twenty-seven Bose PowerMatch PM8500n power amplifiers equipped with Toslink network cards were installed to power the system and configured with Bose ControlSpace Designer software. This software application’s library of signal processing functions allowed the team to create a fully customized signal processing design for the installation.
ControlSpace contains monitoring, optimization, and simulation features that allow system designers to test and modify all signal control programming. Simulations can even be done offline, without having to connect to the actual system. The PM8500n power amps in mono mode provide eight channels rated at 500 watts into 4 ohms. The Springdale system design dedicated four amplifier channels for each subwoofer, two channels for low end speakers and one channel for high end.McGriff’s team relies on the church’s Yamaha CL5 console running on the church’s Dante infrastructure to mix the monaural system for the Springdale sanctuary, as well as to provide a feed with panning for stereo broadcast. “When we initially brought the system up, I was overwhelmed by the sound,” recalls McGriff. “The audio was extremely clear and present, with nothing in it that sounded distant. Only minimal EQ is required to get the sound we want.” McGriff is also pleased with the system’s uniform coverage. “It’s solid,” he says, “from the first seat in the room to the top of the balcony. Walking the room, the average person wouldn’t know which array they were listening to.”
The Future
Since remodeling the sanctuary and installing the new audio system, McGriff and his technical teams have upgraded lighting in the sanctuary with a Jands Vista S3 lighting control system and augmented Springdale’s existing lighting fixtures with Martin and Chauvet LED moving fixtures and Chauvet LED washes.With the recent technology upgrades at Springdale, including the new ShowMatch system and infrastructure improvements with Dante connectivity, Cross Church’s main campus is set for the near future. “The addition of the ShowMatch system for audio has certainly brought us into the 21st century,” notes McGriff. Once again, Cross Church is applying leading technology that is setting Springdale as a new standard and a flagship for other multi-campus churches to follow.
