Step 1: The Importance of Design
The first step in creating a great PA system is the design process. Proper speaker design and layout are essential to ensuring optimal sound quality throughout your worship space. This involves considering key factors like:
- Room dimensions
- Floor, ceiling, and wall materials
- How sound interacts with those surfaces
Using the best software, our audio system designer can model the sound ahead of time. This allows us to anticipate how the audio will behave in different parts of the room, ensuring that everyone in the congregation experiences consistent sound quality. The design process is crucial before purchasing and installing speakers—it’s about more than just buying boxes and hanging them up.
Step 2: Acoustic Treatment
Another critical aspect of your PA system is acoustic treatment. In this room, we’ve installed wall panels to manage sound reflection and reduce reverb. Ideally, we aim for a reverb time of less than two seconds, which helps keep the sound clear and intelligible. Installing acoustic panels on walls and, if necessary, ceilings, can make a significant difference in how your PA system performs.
In this particular church, the leadership wanted to preserve the beautiful wooden ceiling architecture, so we opted not to install ceiling panels. However, there are acoustic solutions that can blend into the design, such as wood-like panels, but these options do add to the cost.
Step 3: Choosing the Right Speakers
For this project, we deployed Fulcrum Acoustic speakers. Specifically, we used the DX 1577, a three-way speaker featuring two 15-inch transducers. This design offers clear separation of frequencies:
- The tweeter handles high frequencies.
- The woofer covers midrange frequencies.
- A separate woofer deals with lower frequencies.
The coaxial design of Fulcrum speakers, which combines the tweeter and woofer, allows for a more compact setup without sacrificing sound quality. We paired the DX 1577 with the CCX 896 down fills, providing comprehensive sound coverage across the room.
Step 4: Rigging and Installation
Rigging is an essential part of a PA system installation. In this project, we used Polar Focus custom fly wear for the speakers and subs. We sent them measurements of the rigging points in the building, and they fabricated the steel hardware required to safely mount the speakers. The result is a compact, structurally sound setup that looks great and saves space.
For the subwoofers, we installed Fulcrum Acoustic 218L passive cardioid subs. These subs are designed to focus the low-frequency energy toward the congregation and reduce the amount of bass that projects back onto the stage. This gives you a more even bass distribution throughout the room, and in this case, the subs were flown to optimize coverage.
Step 5: Passive vs. Active Speaker Systems
One decision you’ll need to make is whether to go with passive or active speakers. For this church, we installed a passive speaker system, meaning the amplifiers are separate from the speakers. We ran multiple speaker cables from the speakers back to the amplifier and processor in the rack.
Passive systems tend to be lighter, which can make rigging easier since the power amplifiers are not housed inside the speakers. On the other hand, active speakers have built-in amplifiers and need power cables in addition to audio cables. Both options have their pros and cons, and it’s important to choose the system that best suits your church’s needs and design preferences.
Step 6: Amplification and Processing
For this installation, we used the Powersoft Unica amplifier, an eight-channel amp that powers all the speakers in the system. This amp is also a processor, meaning it handles EQ and impulse response filters that optimize the sound for the room.
Our audio designer used reference microphones and SMART software to tune the system, applying the necessary EQ adjustments to ensure a flat, accurate mix throughout the space. This allows the volunteers operating the mixing console to focus on mixing channels, without needing to worry about room-specific EQ settings, as those adjustments are handled by the processor.
Step 7: The Mixing Console
Finally, we deployed the Waves LV1 mixing console for this church. It’s one of our favorite systems to use because of the flexibility and quality it offers. But here’s the thing: before you even think about the mixing console, you need to ensure that your PA system design and tuning are done correctly.
Once your system is properly set up and tuned, you can focus on creating fantastic mixes for both in-person services and online broadcasts. A well-designed PA system ensures that your audio will sound great from the moment it’s sent to the speakers, making the mixing process much easier for your team.
Conclusion: Build a Great PA System for Your Church
Building a great church PA system is about more than just the speakers—it’s about the design, acoustic treatment, rigging, amplification, and processing that go into creating a seamless audio experience for your congregation.
If you’re interested in learning more or working with our team to deploy a PA system at your church, head over to churchfront.com to get started. We’d love to chat with you about your needs and help you build the perfect audio system for your space. Thanks for watching, and feel free to leave any questions in the comments below!
