Danley Pattern Control Navigates the Nooks and Crannies at Eastmont Baptist Church
The 1,300-seat sanctuary at Eastmont Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama is both beautiful and unique. Pews wrap around a stage that is much wider than it is deep, and a large balcony overhangs much of the main floor in a similar wrap-around design. With the deep overhang, good sound reinforcement for Eastmont’s orchestra and choir would be challenging under the best of circumstances, but its previous sound system was a ‘Frankensteined’ amalgam of components and band-aids that sounded bad from the start and got worse over time. AVL integration firm Emmaus Media & Design, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, worked with Eastmont to design and install a high-fidelity Danley Sound Labs sound reinforcement system. Danley’s famous point-source pattern control allowed Emmaus to hit every seat with high-intelligibility, high-SPL coverage that varies by no more than 1dB!
“In addition to its regular Sunday services with orchestra and choir, Eastmont hosts a lot of touring acts,” explained Tim James, owner of Emmaus Media & Design. “Their previous sound reinforcement system was a conglomerate of components in a center cluster that was original to the building twenty years ago. The integrator evidently went out of business halfway through the project. It was a mess. The coverage was terrible. You couldn’t walk five feet without it changing. The balcony had no high-frequency content at all. Intelligibility was abysmal. When touring acts came through, they always had to bring their own PA. Eastmont wanted a new system that would sound fantastic day-to-day and that would make them proud when touring acts came through.”
James had three goals. First, he wanted to give Eastmont a stereo system to bring their music to life. Second, he wanted a system with excellent pattern control so that he could hit all of the seats without exciting the rather live acoustic space. Finally, he wanted boxes that could hit concert-level SPLs in service of the touring acts. “Danley is unique in delivering high fidelity, high SPLs, and great pattern control, even at lower frequencies,” he said. “I looked at the drawings and worked out a Danley system that would cover everything.”