WorxAudio Technologies Deployed at Church On The Hill, Virginia

In order to better serve its ever-expanding congregation, Church on the Hill, in Fishersville, Virginia recently opened a new building on its campus that includes a sanctuary, classrooms, and office space. Music plays a vital role in their contemporary worship services and, as such, church management recognized the importance of having a capable sound system to reinforce both the spoken word and the music performed during services. To ensure a high level of speech intelligibility and natural sounding music reproduction, the church selected a series of loudspeaker enclosures drawn from the catalog of Greensboro, North Carolina-based WorxAudio Technologies.

Lee Hartman and Sons, Inc. of Roanoke Virginia, a design/build firm providing A/V solutions to the education, residential, commercial, house of worship, and government markets, was contracted to handle the deployment of the church's new sound reinforcement system. Mike Giammona, the company's systems consultant, designed and managed the installation of Church on the Hill's new loudspeaker setup. He discussed the project's challenges and his decision to deploy WorxAudio's TrueLine series loudspeakers.

"Church on the Hill's new sanctuary is a beautiful facility," states Giammona. "The space measures 70' long by 120' wide and the ceiling height is 24'. Seating capacity is for 700 people and it is moveable so that the arrangement of the seats best accommodates the nature of the service. This design facilitates plays and other special events. Because the room is wider than it is long, we were particularly focused on deploying a system that offered broad horizontal dispersion. At the same time, we needed to be sensitive to the room's aesthetics. The rear wall of the stage / altar area is comprised of rock with wood accents, and it makes for a visually stunning appearance. In selecting the loudspeakers, we wanted to ensure they would not be visually distracting in terms of line of sight to the stage area while, at the same time, providing suitable coverage."

The system Giammona designed revolves around a center cluster comprised of WorxAudio's TrueLine X5i-P installation line array. The X5i-P is a two-way, high efficiency, ultra compact line array incorporating five modules in a single enclosure for a total of five 1" exit compression high frequency drivers and ten 8" cone transducers for low-frequency reproduction. The system is powered by WorxAudio's highly regarded PMD-3 digital power amplifier, which provides 2,000W of power for the low frequencies and 500W for the highs along with twin digital program processors. For bass extension, a single TrueLine X115i-P subwoofer is mounted above the X5i-P cluster.

"WorxAudio's TrueLine X5i-P is a really unique line array system that offers tremendous bang for the buck," Giammona explained. "The system's horizontal dispersion is a very broad 160 degrees, which is unmatched by any competing products in its class, yet its compact form factor was the perfect choice so not to be visually distracting when you look at the stage area."

The stage utilizes a semi-circle design and, as such, protrudes out into the seating area. Because of this, many of those congregation members seated up front find themselves viewing the stage from the sides. To ensure proper sound coverage, Giammona and his crew positioned two WorxAudio X1MDF-P downfill enclosures on the extreme left and right sides of the central cluster. Completing the sound system, two WorxAudio TrueLine TL218SSi-P subwoofers are positioned stage left and right in the far corners. Each TL218SSi-P enclosure incorporates two 18" WorxAudio TL1801A transducers in a bass-reflex configuration.

"Music plays a huge role in Church on the Hill's services," says Giammona, "and with this combination of loudspeakers, they are well positioned to handle any type of service. The eight-member praise/vocal team sounds terrific through the system and when people speak, you can understand every word."

"The fact that the entire system is self-powered was yet another important aspect of this design," he continued. "This eliminated the need to find a home for power amps while simultaneously streamlining the entire cabling process. The end result is a remarkably efficient, low-profile sound system that delivers smooth, natural sound quality with consistent coverage from left to right and front to rear. Pastor Shane Lilly, who also serves as the music minister, has been positively ecstatic about the new system, as have other members of church management and the congregation. This project has been very gratifying on a number of levels and we couldn't have done it without the versatility of WorxAudio's loudspeaker systems."