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| Liberty
Christian Center - Fairfield, CA, USA |
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By Christian Doering, Marketing Partner,
Dynamic Market Systems |
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The challenge: Convert a
supermarket into a state of the art facility for an active,
multi-faceted church with multiple ministries.
The solution: Draw on “friends and family” to
design and operate advanced video, audio and networking systems.
Richard and Joan West, pastors
of Liberty Christian Center, are dedicated
to using modern formats, facilities and technologies to bring
the message of the Bible to the Fairfield, California, a diverse
community situated midway between San Francisco and Sacramento.
When an abandoned shopping mall came on the real estate market,
the Wests realized its potential immediately. With easy access
to I-80 (Fairfield’s “main drag”), the location
was ideal. However, the space would require a lot of renovation
to convert it from an Albertson’s supermarket into a
contemporary Evangelical church. |
Pastor Richard West |
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Liberty Christian offers non-traditional
facilities such as a lobby expresso bar and an “xtreme
kidzone.” While they offer the traditional full-immersion
baptism to committed worshippers, Liberty Christian’s
style is fully contemporary, incorporating a rocking praise
band into its services.
The church has also focused on technology as a way of broadening
its appeal. For example, the “Off the Wall” ministry,
headed by Pastor Ben Dailey, was able to
design a broadcast-ready TV system for the church. Based on
an 8 x 4 Extron switcher, the system currently broadcasts
to CCTV and local cable via Sony
DV cameras with Canon lenses. |
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Editing is currently done on a Mac running
Final Cuts Pro, but will soon move to live switching. At that
point the two Sanyo projectors will be able to display close-ups
from the stage on two 9 X 12 DaLite screens. A further expansion
will enable video coverage of the church’s water-baptism
area, located on one side of the stage.
In another example of hi-tech integration, Liberty Christian
has both Cat5 cable and WiFi (802.11)
Internet access. “You can bring your Palm or
laptop to church, and download the notes for that day’s
sermon,” Pastor Richard West
points out.
As a contemporary ‘rock ‘n roll’ church,
Liberty Christian requires excellent sound. Yet it doesn’t
want to exclude worshippers who are used to a quieter atmosphere
in church. “The number one complaint in a contemporary
church like ours,” says Pastor West, “is
‘It’s too loud in front.’ But when you turn
it down so the front is comfortable, it’s not loud enough
in the back.” |
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problem, the church turned to Sound Decisions,
an audio consultancy based in Sacramento, CA.
“Liberty Christian Center chose me out of three consultants,
based on our previous relationship, and put me in contact
with their architectural team in the design portion of the
project,” recalls Travis Nie
of Sound Decisions. “I worked
with the architect, doing acoustical models of the facility,
looking at some of the surfaces and some of the things they
were planning to do.
The facility is basically a rectangular room. There were some
dimensional changes done so there are not drastic parallel
surfaces. It’s open to structure on the ceiling, the
ductwork and trusses are exposed and painted dark brown for
theatrical reasons. The deck is about 22 feet above the floor.
All in all, the room acoustically is not a bad space, although
the RT is a little bit long for the style of music they play.
There is six inches of fiberglass thermal insulation on the
ceiling, which helps quite a bit. But we want to treat the
rear wall to try to eliminate some of the spatial reflections
coming back to the platform.” |
Travis Nie |
The design
of the room and the sound system design took place concurrently.
“There were quite a few changes taking place
during the construction of the facility,” Nie
says, “which sometimes makes it difficult for
a designer. But we were able to work with it by revising our
acoustical models.”
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“We had originally designed
an ST9 loudspeaker system. But the new line array had just
come out, and I thought this was a perfect application: low
ceiling, the customer really wants a high energy, high impact
worship space for a full contemporary music service. So I
called Pastor Richard West and said, ‘Since Renkus-Heinz
is just a jump down the road, let’s hop on a plane and
go kick the tires on this new line array.’ Of course
they were accommodating, they were gracious enough to have
a system all set up and ready for us. The client really liked
it, he said ‘Let’s go with this.’ I had
emailed the acoustic model, so when we went into the meeting
we put it in – that showed it was a great decision.
Ralph Heinz and Jim Mobley were playing around with the model,
giving us some ideas of what we could do.”
“Ralph Heinz is a big reason this system is in here,”
says West. “His personal involvement
was a big factor in our choice of loudspeakers.”
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Liberty Christian Center now has left
and right line arrays of seven PNX102/LA’s,
bi-amplified with Crest Pro 9001 amplifiers
driving the 10-inch woofers and 6001’s powering the
1-inch compression drivers, which are loaded onto Renkus-Heinz’
Plane Wave Generator to produce the flat high-frequency wavefront
required for proper line array performance. An Acoustic Diffraction
Baffle provides diffraction loading through the mid-range
transition from the woofers to the high frequency section.
This keeps the horizontal coverage from narrowing through
the transition, preserving consistent frequency response at
the edges of the array’s coverage.
To deliver the subbass impact required for contemporary music,
Nie installed four STX5-LO
subwoofers, powered by a Crest Pro 10001,
in the center of the room. “There’s some
bandpassing between drivers to control the polar pattern of
that low frequency energy,” Nie
explains, adding “On each side of the subwoofer
array we installed a PNX121M as a delayed satellite, to help
that left and right energy reach the far side of the room.
It creates very nice stereo imaging on either side. If you’re
off axis, you’re still hearing stereo.”
The stereo satellites are powered by Crest Pro 7001’s.
With a budget of $126,000, the satellite
speakers were a bit of a luxury item, but a review of the
EASE model convinced the client, Nie says.
“We were able to plug it into the model right
there and see the cause and effect. Ralph said ‘It’s
kind of a no-brainer, I think we should do it.’ The
customer was right there, watching them take a vested interest
in the project.”
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Liberty Christian’s mix position,
located at the rear of the space, holds a 40-channel Crest
X8 for FOH and monitors. The processing racks hold eight dbx
166XL compressor/limiters, a pair of dbx Pro Vocal processors,
a Rane G4 Quad Gate and a Rane DEQ60L.
Two Rane RPM88 processors are in use for
loudspeaker management (crossover, limiting and delay if needed)
on the FOH system. Shure XLS4 and UA844
wireless systems get the signals from choir, band and pastoral
microphones to the console. A pair of TASCAM
cassette/CD players are on hand to playback pre-recorded material. |
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Liberty Christian Center held its first services in the new
space on April 25, 2004 and the Grand Opening was the following
weekend.
“Everyone is really happy with the system,”
Travis Nie reports. “It really
sounds great, and we haven’t even got to the acoustic
treatment. You can actually walk from the rear of the room
straight up to an array and not hear any difference.
During commissioning, I was testing the system, and as I was
starting to clean some things up, I looked over at the associate
pastor. He was walking around a little teary-eyed, saying
‘This is incredible,’ he was so impressed with
the way it sounded.”
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The Consultant: Travis Nie, Sound Decision
916 488 4642
travisnie@sounddecision.com
Pastor Richard West
Associate Pastor Ben Dailey
Liberty Christian Center
2641 North Texas Street
Fairfield, CA 94534
707.425.9673 fax 9965
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