When the leaders at Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama green lighted a full renovation of the mega church’s 2,700-seat main worship center, the job of designing and building a state of the art, upgraded audio system was awarded to Blackhawk Audio. In addition to world-class sound and coverage, Shades Mountain also wanted to ensure that the new system was discrete in that it was contained within a very compact grill cloth area. Blackhawk found the solution with EAW and its ADAPTive line, including its Anya™ and Anna™ Loudspeakers and Otto™ Subwoofers, as well as its VFR89i Stage Monitors.
“One of the biggest selling points of the EAW ADAPTive speaker system was that in addition to its audio quality and excellent coverage, it also was low profile and would not visually overwhelm the sanctuary,” says Blackhawk Audio President Rick Shimer. “The previous look of the sanctuary had a very large ‘speaker cluster’ with grill cloth. Ensuring that the PA system was less obtrusive while also offering pristine sound was a main factor for this project; they wanted a particular look and we are able to achieve this using EAW’s Anya, Anna and Otto.”
The upgrade, which consisted of over 30 EAW speakers, included two Anya’s each for far house left and far house right, six Anna’s each for house left and right, two Anna’s for down fills, six Otto subwoofers for center and eight VFR89i passive two-way stage monitors for the choir.
“The EAW ADAPTive platform has proven to be the best choice for sonic clarity and acoustical control across our worship center,” says Ryan Maynard, production manager, Shades Mountain Baptist Church. “Blackhawk’s design and deployment of the system has given equal attention to all seats in the room, so that everyone has an engaging experience, no matter their preference of seating location. For a system this powerful and configurable to fit within the confines of the new ceiling structure is quite an accomplishment.”
