TRINIDAD – The 3,000-seat Trinidad Christian Center in Petit Valley, Trinidad has installed a Renkus-Heinz self-powered loudspeaker system for its highly production-based worship services, as part of an ongoing program of investment in its facilities.
The church – one of the sun-kissed Caribbean island’s largest houses of worship – hosts eight to ten services a week in its main hall, where the new system has been installed, while a second smaller hall caters for 1,200 people and further breakout halls serve community events, children’s groups and special events.
A very high, curved ceiling characterizes the wide, 180-degree fan-shaped main hall, where system integrator AMR, based in Barataria, Trinidad, began a series of upgrades of the room’s house system in 2005. The original system consisted mainly of ceiling loudspeakers, which while providing some sound reinforcement gave neither ‘presence’ to the oration nor directional focus back to the altar or to the stage.
Systems Engineer Clifford Beckles comments: “There needed to be a sense of where the voice is coming from, a sense of localization; it was about directivity. The acoustics are very nice – it just needed a good sound system install!”
Worship services, which are entirely volunteer-led, generally involve loud music ministry, who also appreciate a high level in their monitors. Almost every member of the choir has their own solo microphone – “it seems to be a Trinidadian thing and it makes the engineer sweat!” comments Beckles. A Shure Beta lead mic is complemented by a Countryman Isomax and a full complement of Shure wireless handheld systems.
The main sound system, he explains, had to deliver a high power-to-size/weight ratio due to the ceiling’s restricted loading capacity and the desire to keep sightlines clear. The system comprises four self-powered PN102/LA cabinets a side, with each array totaling just under 300 pounds. These cover the entire main body of the seating and Beckles comments: “That loudspeaker has the most amazing dispersion I’ve ever seen in the horizontal, and even the bottom cabinet gives quite workable nearfield fill. We didn’t lose much coverage in the front at all – maybe six feet from the raised dais.”
That near fill area was duly filled in with a Renkus-Heinz PN82/12 and two compact PN82/9 self-powered cabinets, four more of which were deployed in two delay zones at the room’s extremities. “When we’d installed them we were expecting to tweak them with EQ,” adds Beckles, “but the general room measurements turned out to be almost ruler-flat; there was almost no need for EQ at all. To EQ the room we used a 1/3 octave EQ at various locations around the room, looked at it with SMAART in a few different areas, and dialed it back in by hand. And there’s more than enough output – we’re running the PN102/LAs well below their maximum output potential.”
However, he adds, the real tuning of the room was carried out by Senior Pastor Rev. Austin J. de Bourg and his Junior Reverends, who walked up and down with the technicians for the entire ten hours of tuning. “They’re not technical,” says Beckles, “but they knew what exactly they liked. Senior Pastor de Bourg had this tone that he wanted; he has very good ears and is blessed with a fantastic dynamic, both vocally and personally, and he influenced the tuning in a way that he liked, as did the junior ministers. It was an incredibly positive process.”
The system is zoned using a dbx DriveRack 260, which provides basic EQ and around 6-8dB of feedback suppression. In control is a pair of Yamaha 02R digital consoles, which are scheduled to be moved to the church’s video editing suite when the FOH desk is upgraded to a Soundcraft Vi6 digital console.
In the meantime, AMR is providing enhancements to the monitor system with the addition of a transformer-isolated 32 channel split snake to allow for the use of an existing 32-channel Mackie as a dedicated monitor console, replacing the former arrangement of a taking a monitor sub-mix from the 02Rs. AMR’s suggestion of color-matching the existing monitor wedges to the carpet also proved a hit with the video production team, which deploys a multi-camera video production with left and right image magnification screens and a 48-track Fostex hard disk recording system.
Clifford Beckles concludes: “The Senior Reverend downloaded an intelligibility software package to check out the results for himself and found the system was perfect, with almost totally flat EQ apart from a few deliberate dips to suit the required sound for the worship space.”
