WorxAudio Loudspeakers Deployed At The Citadel

Established in 1842, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina is a state-supported, comprehensive college and is one of the six senior military colleges in the United States. More than 3,400 men and women are enrolled in over 20 full- and part-time graduate and undergraduate programs. Summerall Chapel serves as the primary worship and meeting space for the campus. The school recently upgraded to a new sound system utilizing loudspeakers drawn from WorxAudio Technologies, a division of PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc.

Working in conjunction with Victor Quarterman, of Charleston's Fox Music House, Gattis Pro Sound, a full service audio/visual, lighting, and staging company, designed and installed the WorxAudio loudspeaker system. Sid Gattis, the Lexington, South Carolina-based firm's president, says, "Summerall Chapel at The Citadel was built in 1936. The chapel is in the style of 14th-century Gothic architecture and the furniture throughout the room is plain, sawed Appalachian Mountain white oak, stained cathedral brown. This is a visually stunning room that accommodates roughly 1,000 people and handles a wide variety of events, ranging from worship services to weddings and large meetings or lectures. It was imperative that the sound system offer first-class speech intelligibility and music-reproduction capabilities.

"As a very traditional sanctuary, we needed to be respectful of the room's aesthetics. We could not use painted enclosures. Working with a boutique company like WorxAudio, we were not only able to secure loudspeakers that fit the project requirements in terms of audio performance, we were able to get the enclosures unfinished so they could be stained to match the décor of the room. As a result, the loudspeaker cluster blends beautifully into the space."

Over the front of the stage/pulpit area, Gattis and his crew deployed a center cluster consisting of eight WorxAudio TrueLine V5T-PAS ultra-compact line arrays. These passive, two-way line array loudspeakers are suspended using WorxAudio's proprietary TrueAim grid and are flown at a height of 40'. Low-frequency support is provided by a single TrueLine X115 subwoofer positioned at the top of the loudspeaker cluster. Another V5T-PAS enclosure is mounted on the rear of the loudspeaker cluster and angled down at the stage area to serve as a monitor. Yamaha P7000S-series amplifiers drive the loudspeaker system.

Gattis says the TrueLine Series loudspeakers were the right choice for this project because "the V5 offers a 120-degree horizontal dispersion pattern that works beautifully for this space, and the system's 10-degree vertical throw per module, with one degree increment focusing, handled the length of the room perfectly. The chapel has seating for approximately 1,000 people, and the WorxAudio system sounds great no matter where you are seated."

Since the installation of the Citadel's new WorxAudio loudspeaker system, Chaplin Joel Harris says, "The system sounds terrific and visually blends beautifully into the room. I'll never forget how thrilled I was when I first heard it. It was terrific. The WorxAudio loudspeakers deliver a clear, natural sound that you really have to hear to fully appreciate. The system couldn't have worked out better."