PreSonus Mixer and Loudspeaker Technology Brings Clarity to Worship Services at New Hope Presbyterian ChurchNew Hope Presbyterian Church (EPC) in fort Meyers, Florida, exists to teach and live the Gospel of Christ and bring His Kingdom's presence to one another throughout the community. With the recent completion of their new sanctuary, worshippers enjoy a beautiful, inspiring environment. To ensure superior audio performance, church management elected to install a StudioLive 32.4.2AI digital mixing console and two WorxAudio X3 compact all-in-one line array enclosures -- all drawn from the equipment catalog of Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based PreSonus Audio Electronics. Creative Sound and Lighting Solutions of Cape Coral, Florida, an AV installation company that services the house of worship, education, entertainment park, and performance hall markets, was contracted to design and deploy the new sound reinforcement system. After meeting with church management to ascertain their objectives, the team determined the PreSonus equipment would be an excellent fit for this project, at which point, they coordinated with PreSonus' Commercial Division to secure the products and obtain suggestions as to how the gear could best be utilized. Creative Sound co-owner Rob Robinson, who is actively involved in both the company's sales and installation activities, discussed the project. "With their new building, which had its first service on Easter Sunday, New Hope Presbyterian Church has a wonderful sanctuary with world-class sound," Robinson reports. "The sanctuary is 80' wide by 80' deep with a peaked ceiling down the center of the space that reaches 25' at its highest point. The space seats approximately 250 people. There is no balcony. Their services are both traditional and contemporary, so it was important that the sound system not only deliver a high level of speech intelligibility, it also needed to be very musical. For this reason, we elected to install two PreSonus WorxAudio X3 line arrays, which are two-way, high efficiency, loudspeaker systems." According to Robinson, the two WorxAudio X3 enclosures are suspended by a single 1.5" pipe directly over the front edge of the stage, with the left and right arrays positioned 30' apart. "The X3 loudspeaker system was really built for this kind of room," Robinson says. "These enclosures are painted white, so they blend in with the room's aesthetics really well. With the X3's broad, 160-degree horizontal dispersion pattern, coverage is clear and consistent throughout all areas of the room. And with a design that encompasses three modules within a single enclosure, the X3's vertical dispersion is excellent, so coverage extends all the way to the rear of the space." The front-of-house mixing station is located stage left of center at the back of the room in an open sound booth. Here, the PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI digital mixing console resides. The StudioLive 32.4.2AI console is a 32-channel (32x4x2) digital mixer that offers 14 aux buses, four subgroups, a talkback section with high-headroom, Class A XMAX microphone preamps, extensive LED metering, mixer scene save and recall capability, six quick scene buttons, and channel-strip save/recall/copy/paste among its numerous features. "Presently," Robinson reports, "the console's scene recall capability is already assuming an important role while mixing the services. As the staff gets more comfortable with the technology, they will have a wealth of features to avail themselves of -- particularly since video assumes an equally important role in their services. The church has a full-time livestream person in the projection booth who can place any camera shot up on the screens, so this combination of sound and imagery is really quite impressive, and the new mixer will certainly add to their overall capabilities." With an installation of this level, questions inevitably arise, so responsive, capable support services are crucial. In this regard, Robinson rates PreSonus Commercial Division best-in-class. "Tony Flammia, PreSonus' director of the commercial audio division, was our go-to guy with the WorxAudio loudspeakers," he said, "and, as usual, Tony was dead on in his responses to every question we asked. Similarly, Jon Taylor, the company's technical sales consultant, helped us with the StudioLive console. One of the coolest aspects of all this is that we bought a dedicated in ear monitor system for one of the sound techs and, using PreSonus' UC Surface app for the Apple iPad, he can remotely control the mixer. This enables him to monitor the livestream audio mix while located in another room." With the successful opening of services at New Hope Presbyterian Church's new sanctuary, Robinson reports his client is very pleased with their new sound system. "Our client has been very complimentary," states Robinson. "We've been told by numerous people how easy it is to understand every spoken word no matter where one happens to be seated -- and the music sounds big and full through the system. This has been another very successful project for us and PreSonus was crucial to its success!" To learn more about the services of Creative Sound and Lighting Solutions of Cape Coral, Florida, visit the company's website at www.creativesoundsolution.com or call 888-865-8195. 
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