Our Work

Grace Heartland Church

Location: Elizabethtown, Kentucky

TMS Scope for Main Sanctuary: Loudspeaker System Renovation & Room Acoustics
TMS Scope for Youth Chapel: Room Acoustics & Sound Reinforcement System

Sound Contractor: Systems installed by church staff members Greg Bolton and Clark Hewitt.

Project: Two projects actually. We first worked with the church on a new construction project that included a Youth Chapel. Our scope involved designing for the room acoustics and the sound system in that Chapel. We also provided technical advice for the theatrical lighting system and for the video projection system. The main loudspeaker system was built around Sound Physics Labs td-1 loudspeakers. Designed by Tom Danley when he worked for Servodrive, these were the precursor to the SH-50 from Danley Sound Labs that we later used in the Main Sanctuary renovation project.

Church Technical Director Greg Bolton had his own company installing AV equipment for small churches in the region, and he decided that he would take on the installation of these systems himself. The results were excellent.

Fast foward a few years to 2010 when Greg called me once again, this time to design the upgrade for the loudspeaker system in the church's main sanctuary, and to improve the room acoustics as well. It is always a joy to work with a client on a second project. We're already friends. We each know what to expect from the other. So this second project couldn't have gone more smoothly.

The construction of the main platform in the sanctuary would not allow for subwoofers to be embedded into it, so it was clear that we would need to fly the subs. Flying the main loudspeakers below a sea of drop ceiling tiles was deemed acceptable, especially since the original loudspeaker system had already been installed that way. What seemed a little awkward was the idea of seeing the physically large subwoofers hanging over the platform, just below that drop ceiling.

Instead, we decided to place the subwoofers just above the drop ceiling firing straight down. We replaced a group of ceiling tiles just below each subwoofer with speaker fabric to allow the sound to come through the drop ceiling grid unimpeded. The physical spacing and signal delay "trick" were chosen to create a cardioid subwoofer array that fills the room yet keeps the sub-bass frequencies on the platform to a minimum. God's laws of physics at work.

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