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[Tu A Nguyen]

Hi brothers,

We are in Vietnam and our church has just been rebuilt. However the main hall is not design with acoustical principles, I means our architect has no information about how to design the hall which can make the sound beautiful, avoid any echo, duplicated sound.....
Then this is the time that we need to make some adjustment to our room to remove the echo sound and make the sound clear and beautiful. But we are unable to find any company in VN has good experience about this. There're some Sound engineering companies but most of them have no or least experience with church sound.

In addition, we would need to invest a new sound system to replace the old system which has about 20years old and not good enough for the new hall.
I would very appreciate any suggestion about what equipment we should have for a new system.

Some information about the hall:
- Length: ~ 24m
- Width: ~14m
- Height: ~ 11m
- We have a mezzanine which takes all of the width and placed at around half of the length and half of the total height as well.
-Total seats for the main floor and the mezzanine is around 1000.

The total budget for the system is around 30,000 USD. We current have a AllenHeath 2400 32 lines mixer

If any one can help or have information about a company in VN can help please ping me via my email: [email protected]

Thanks in advance.
Tu Nguyen

[Jerome Malsack]

If you want to keep the echo controlled than you may want to consider a horn speaker with a tight pattern and keep the sound from pointing at walls.  Use a horn that has 60 x 40 pattern for the highs 2k to 20k frequency. 

Are they open to center hung speaker?   two line array speakers hung from the center. 

Rear wall would need to have some acoustic treatment to breakup and absorb the sound.   
Will you want a sub or two for a musical output, or will this be mostly vocals. 

Hope the typhoon did not damage much.   I was hoping someone would contact you here to help design and provide guidance.   

[Ivan Beaver]

If you want to keep the echo controlled than you may want to consider a horn speaker with a tight pattern and keep the sound from pointing at walls.  Use a horn that has 60 x 40 pattern for the highs 2k to 20k frequency. 

Are they open to center hung speaker?   two line array speakers hung from the center. 

If you want to control the sound-you need a LARGE horn. 

What makes you think a 60x40 would be right-given the limited amount of information provided?

Sorry-but 2 "line array" speakers does not make a line array.

So it doesn't matter what the output-or pattern is-as long as they are "line arrays"?

Not to be "mean", but it is EXACTLY that sort of thinking that results in poor system performance.

There is a HUGE difference between actually doing a design for a specific end result and just "throwing up some speakers" and hoping for the best.

[Tim Perry]

There is a HUGE difference between actually doing a design for a specific end result and just "throwing up some speakers" and hoping for the best.

But that's what seems to happen most of the time.

[Ivan Beaver]

But that's what seems to happen most of the time.

Sad but true.

There is a reason most Churches buy 3 sound systems before they get it right.  And it would have been A LOT cheaper to get the right one first-but they try to "cheap out" or get the local Rat Shack guy or the guy in the Church with the good stereo system to install it and so forth.

[Tim Perry]

There is a reason most Churches buy 3 sound systems before they get it right.

Most that I see never get it "right"... And that is true for many other facilities other then churches. 

Step 1: buy some speakers, whatever is locally available and cheap.

Step 2: hang then up in whatever fashion seem expedient,  (perforated hanging strap, for example) pointed vaguely at the audience.

Step 3: add a couple more at the rear pointing forward

Step 4: look for some magic add on that cost less then $40USD to fix the resulting problems.

 Step 50: Find a competent sound installer, ask his (or her) advice, and disregard it.

[Ivan Beaver]

Step 4: look for some magic add on that cost less then $40USD to fix the resulting problems.

 

It is amazing to me all the "advice" that people offer (about what to buy) and yet they have no idea about the actual problem (much less about how to fix it)-but somehow this "gadget" will fix all the issues.

So they keep adding "stuff" to the system-and the quality goes down and down-but it is supposed to be getting better.

Yet people somehow forget that with the new addition the sound quality is actually WORSE than it was before.  Yet they don't remove the latest thing that was added-because it is "cool" and "great".

It never ceases to amaze me how much bad information is passed around as "fact" in this industry.

[Jerome Malsack]

So raising the number of the boxes on the line array to 4 and starting to see some control on the sound with the array mounted about 1 meter off the ceiling would leave about 8 meters above the floor.  Would this be starting to give you the coverage in the space. 

If we figure the floor will be 14 x 24 meters and the seating area would be 12 meters x 20 meters.   

Now we need to have the answer on how musical to decide upon the use of the subs to fill out the bottom. 
How much would it cost if you were to plan the system and help the user? 

[Ivan Beaver]

So raising the number of the boxes on the line array to 4 and starting to see some control on the sound with the array mounted about 1 meter off the ceiling would leave about 8 meters above the floor.  Would this be starting to give you the coverage in the space. 

This is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings about line arrays.

It is NOT the number of boxes-but rather the total vertical height (be it 2 boxes or 10) and the coverage of each box that determines what the end result will be.

But this is why the "mini line arrays" have started popping up.  People can afford more of the smaller boxes so the "box count" is higher for a given investment.  Yet it takes more of them to get the height needed.

As if those people even knew the basic theory behind line arrays and how the LENGTH of the array matters-NOT the number of boxes.

Not all boxes are the same-not even close.  So you simply cannot talk in terms of "boxes"

And if you have 4 "typical" 10° boxes-mounted up high-how can you possibly cover the space?  At least with any sort of evenness of coverage.  Sure there will be "sound" everywhere-but is it the same sound?  THAT is the idea-not just to make noise.  CLARITY and even coverage is important-especially in a Church.

[Tu A Nguyen]

If you want to keep the echo controlled than you may want to consider a horn speaker with a tight pattern and keep the sound from pointing at walls.  Use a horn that has 60 x 40 pattern for the highs 2k to 20k frequency. 

Are they open to center hung speaker?   two line array speakers hung from the center. 

Rear wall would need to have some acoustic treatment to breakup and absorb the sound.   
Will you want a sub or two for a musical output, or will this be mostly vocals. 

Hope the typhoon did not damage much.   I was hoping someone would contact you here to help design and provide guidance.

Hi Jerome Malsack,

Thanks for help, the typhoon didn't head directly to our city which is at the south area. But it's heading to some of our north cities. We are hoping everything will be ok to our people there.

Regards to your concerns, as the style would be worship style then we will have both vocal (when our Pastor gives sermons) and some musical instruments (Piano, drums, keyboards, guitar bass, violins...)

We can hang the speaker from the ceiling or at the wall behind the stage.

[Tu A Nguyen]

Thanks you all for your help, I do really get alot of useful information.

I thinks that a architectural drawing of the hall would help a lot for you guys to understand the hall and can give the advise that exactly resolve the issues.

I'll try to get back with a drawing.

Thanks again.

[ProSoundWeb Community]