With its mission to develop disciples of Christ Jesus who joyfully exchange all that they are for all that He is, First Baptist Church is devoted to developing disciples of Christ. The church recently underwent an extensive facility upgrade to its sound reinforcement capabilities and, as part of this endeavor, they now have new loudspeakers drawn from the Vantec, Event, and Aero series catalogs of Valencia, Spain-based DAS Audio.
DiTech AV LLC of El Campo, TX, an AV design / build firm that services the worship and commercial markets while also operating a live event services division, was contracted to design and deploy the church’s new sound system. Paul Guthrie, the firm’s owner, who heads sales, system design, and system integration, discussed the project.
“First Baptist Church has an incredibly unique, 1200 seat sanctuary that is contemporary in its design and is positively beautiful,” says Guthrie. “The overall width of the space is 150 feet with a depth of 140 feet. The stage runs the width of the room with a center 30-foot thrust that projects out in front of the stage area. Seating is fixed with a capacity for 1200 people and the congregation area has an incline, or rake, of 18 feet from front to rear. Services are a blended style of both traditional and contemporary but leaning more toward the contemporary side. There is both a praise band and an 8-member praise vocal team that provide a very uplifting worship experience.”
The new loudspeaker system deployed by Guthrie and his crew includes three DAS Audio Vantec-20A active curve sourced line array enclosures that are flown dead center—facing straight out into the room—directly above the stage thrust. There is also a fourth Vantec-20A that serves as a center delay speaker. This is positioned 70 feet back into the room. Directly to the left and right of the center loudspeaker cluster, there are two flown clusters, with each hang consisting of five DAS Aero-12A powered line array elements. These two loudspeaker clusters are angled to face the left and right sides of the sanctuary.
For low frequency support, the DiTech AV team deployed two DAS Audio Event-218A powered subwoofers. These two enclosures are positioned in the center area above the line array clusters and among the stage truss.
When queried about those attributes of the DAS Audio loudspeakers that made them so well-suited for the First Baptist Church project, Guthrie stressed the importance of both speech intelligibility and the ability to accurately reproduce music. “Several factors led us to choose DAS,” he explained. “Ultimately, speech intelligibility was a crucial concern, because without this, the message gets lost. We also wanted the system to be very musical and live sounding. We wanted the audience to not only hear the music, but to feel it as well and, in this regard, the DAS system really delivers. Further, the integrated rigging and hardware made the installation process go very smoothly. The entire installation is very clean in appearance and is not the least bit visually distracting.”
With many installed sound projects, questions arise. Thus, it is crucial that integrators be able to get accurate and timely information to keep a project on schedule. When asked about DAS Audio’s customer and technical support services, Guthrie offered the following comments, “I like to use DAS because they make great products that sound amazing and will absolutely blow you away. It’s easy to work with the company and they are always there to support you. I called Carlos Henao, the company’s US Accounts Manager, told him what I was thinking and what I wanted to do, and he was right there when I needed him. For this project, we had a very tight window due to the end of the year and the Holidays. Carlos went out of his way to make certain every aspect of the project was well taken care of.”
With the new DAS sound system up and operational since January, Guthrie reports receiving a lot of positive feedback. “The new system is a night and day difference compared to the previous setup,” he said. “WOW, it’s crazy how much better everything sounds! The DAS system sounds full, smooth, and exceptionally clean—and I can finally hear—and feel—the low end.” Omar Garcia, the Worship and Evangelism Pastor, added, “After service, I had a church member ask what we had done, or how we fixed the sound, because it sounded phenomenal. He said the music sounded great and you could clearly hear Pastor David Adams. Pastor David is happy because he can come down off the stage and get closer to the audience without any feedback. With this new system, we could host concerts if we wanted and not have any worries.”
To learn more about DiTech AV LLC, visit the company’s website at www.ditechav.com or call (979) 616-0101.
