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[Aaron Harp]

After spending a few years in temporary locations, the church I work at has finally moved into a permanent location.  The location is two shopping centers stores joined together.  So it's a pretty small location.  It can hold about 220 people max.  The room is wider than it is long and we have to make use of every space in it for seating.  This leaves the areas directly to the side of the stage being used for seating.  Right now we're just using our old stand mounted speakers, but we would like to install something permanent.  The building has a suspended ceiling, so we don't have many mounting options.  Something lightweight would be the best option.

So here are my questions...

1. What speaker setup should we use?  We could mount two speakers stereo in the front of the stage and have fill speakers on the side or we could have three speakers mounted in the very center at different angles to cover the whole room.  Or if someone makes it, it would be great to find one speaker that has a horizontal dispersion range greater than 180 degrees.  

2. What speakers should we use?  They will need to be as small as possible because the ceiling is 10' high and the stage is about 18 inches.  I was looking at the Bose Panaray 802 Series III speakers but I don't really know anything about them.  What are some of my options?  I'm thinking that since we'll need to find something smaller (usually meaning less low-response) we'll need to think about subs as well.

Your help would be greatly appreciated...thanks!

Aaron

[Tom Young]

Trying to help with no idea of the layout of the platform (it's size and orientation to the room) and where there are rigging points (etc) is not possible. Other factors include praise/worship style, acoustic info about the space, ambient noise levels, behavior of band, etc, etc.

You cannot simply choose a loudspeaker and hang it without great risk that the load will not be supported over time and this can result in someone getting injured, maimed or killed. Suspension of loudspeakers (as well as lighting and projectors) requires a structural engineer. The fact that you are a church and/or a small church does not exempt you from this responsibility.

Designing a stereo sound reinforcement loudspeaker system is a non-trivial, very complicated task. You do not simply put two loudspeakers up to either side.

If you continue to try to do this on your own and with what help folks here may offer I can guarantee you that you will end up with a less than good sound system and one that also may be unsafe.

What do you do ? Hire a qualified design consultant or design-build contractor who specialize in sound systems for HOW and have proven track records.

Do it right, do it once.

[Greg Hertfelder]

With a lay-in ceiling you can't rely on speakers at the front of the room to cover the whole space without blowing away those seated near the front in order to reach the back. Also, spaces like this are prone to have slap-back echo if the back wall is not sufficiently treated...for starters. A low-ceiling space typically calls for a combination cluster-distributed system.

The cluster in the front gives a sense of direction, drawing the eye and ear to the stage, but a distributed system in the lay-in ceiling actually carries an equal sound pressure level to seating through out the room. The distributed speakers consist of concentric rings starting at the cluster. Each ring is delayed electronically to compensate for acoustical delay, so that that sound emanating from the cluster coincides with the delay ring. Bass energy should not come from the distributed system, but a subwoofer near the cluster.

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