Since the completion of its expansive, 1,750-seat sanctuary in 2013, Johns Creek United Methodist Church has become a destination not only for its members, but also for the public at large. Its lush, long reverberation makes an ideal setting for musical performances of all types, from symphony orchestras to contemporary bands to solo concerts on its massive pipe organ. The church is part of what earned Johns Creek – a northeastern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia – its top-ten spot in USA Today’s 2017 “50 Best Cities to Live In.” Unfortunately, the sanctuary’s long reverb time also made for lousy intelligibility –that is, until dB Integrations, of Gainesville, Georgia, designed and installed a new Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system. Acoustician Tom Danley’s patented technologies allow Johns Creek UMC’s two Danley SBH10 column-form, point-source loudspeakers to deliver phase-coherent audio to the seats, with remarkably little energy splashed on the walls.

“The space itself is large: 150 feet wide by 100 feet deep, with a 40-foot balcony that spans the room,” explained Ronnie Stanford, director of sales and marketing at dB Integrations. “They had some column-form loudspeakers in there that had poor pattern control and not enough throw to make it to the back of the room. With an RT60 of 4.4 seconds and the poor pattern control of the existing loudspeakers the overall intelligibility in the room was extremely low. The church originally contacted us with the hope that we would treat the room acoustically. However, Danley’s steep pattern control can improve these kinds of situations by keeping energy off the walls and ceiling and thus reducing the reverb generated by the sound reinforcement system. So instead of messing with the acoustics, which would hurt the room’s musicality, I suggested instead that we explore replacing the sound reinforcement system with Danley boxes.”

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“This is the church that I grew up in and the church my mom attended till the day she died,” said Sid Gattis, speaking of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina. “It was built in the 1950s in Forest Acres, one of the oldest communities in Columbia, and it’s a stunning example of a liturgical church: big, old, tall pine ceiling, hard pews, hard floors… it’s just a hard space all around. I think they begrudgingly put some fuzzy stuff on the kneelers to spare some old joints, but that’s it. The sanctuary is beautiful, but also very challenging from the standpoint of intelligibility.” Gattis is the owner of Gattis Pro Audio, and he recently improved things at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields by installing a distributed system of Danley Sound Labs’ smallest loudspeaker and subwoofer: the Danley Nano and the Danley Nano Sub.

Gattis had installed the church’s previous system over twenty years ago, when he was just launching his new company. “We put in a big center cluster with a delay to cover the balcony halfway back,” he said. “It was a lot better than what they had previously been using, so that was okay, but it wasn’t ideal. Over the years, things failed and got replaced with pretty much whatever, until the church decided it was time for a refresh.” Gattis put together a proposal based on some previous experiences he had had with Danley Nanos. “The Nanos produce a way-bigger sound than seems possible from such a small box,” he said. “I thought if we distributed Nanos and painted them to match the wood, St. Martin’s would get intelligibility without compromising the aesthetic.” The church committee put in its due diligence and pressed the top three proposers for demos. Gattis obliged and won the job.

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