I’m going to say it up front: this is my favorite PA system for churches. We’re standing in a space with a Meyer Sound system, and if you’ve never heard Meyer in person, you need to. The clarity, the coverage, the consistency—it’s in a different league.
What you’re looking at behind me is a full Meyer line array system with the LINA boxes. Right side, left side, seven boxes per array, and center-flown subs in the middle. This is Meyer’s most compact line array option, and it’s perfect for smaller to mid-size church venues.
Here’s the thing about line arrays that makes them different from point source systems: efficiency over distance.
With a typical point source speaker, your volume drops by about six decibels every time you double the distance from the source. But with a line array? It only drops by about three decibels as you double the distance. That’s a huge difference when you’re trying to cover a room consistently.
What this means practically is you don’t need delay speakers or fill speakers all over the place—assuming you’re within coverage of the arrays. The sound gets from way up near the ceiling (where we’re rigging them) to the back of the room efficiently and evenly.
Now, to get this to work right, you need proper trim height. The higher you can fly these boxes, the better your line length control, especially for low-end management. Our designers dive deep into the acoustics and physics of this stuff, but what you need to know is: trim height matters, and having enough boxes in your array matters.
The LINA is the compact version, ideal for that 250 to maybe 700-800 seat range. Once you’re pushing into 900 seats and beyond, you’re probably looking at the next size up—the Leopard box. And if you’re in a massive arena or large venue, that’s when you get into Panther territory. (Fun fact: Metallica uses those in arenas.)
For most churches, the LINA delivers that incredible Meyer sound in a format that actually makes sense for the space and budget.
We’ve got Meyer 2100 LFC subwoofers flown center. These things sound amazing—deep, even bass that fills the room without getting boomy or uneven.
My favorite setup is actually a combination: flown subs for even coverage throughout the room, plus ground-stacked subs under the stage for that extra oomph and physical feeling you get in your feet when you’re closer to the front. In this particular space, we couldn’t do ground stack because of the stage construction and because they use this space for sports. But if you can do both? That’s the move.
Even with line arrays, you need front fill speakers for the first few rows. These arrays are aimed to cover the main floor, but when you’re sitting right up front, you don’t want to feel like the sound is coming from way above you and off to the side. You want it to feel like it’s coming from the stage.
We’re using Meyer UP M1 P point source speakers here. Our audio designer calculated the exact spacing needed between them to get even coverage across the front. If you’re sitting in the first row or two, you’re hearing the same frequency response and appropriate loudness as everyone else—it’s just coming from the right place.
And let’s be real: you know who sits in the front row. Your pastor and your pastor’s wife. They have opinions. Front fills keep everyone happy.
This church has their tech booth on a second story, essentially in a separate room. We had a choice: put the mixing console down on the main floor in the coverage of the arrays, or keep everything up in the booth.
We kept it in the booth for workflow reasons—Sunday mornings, you just open the window, turn everything on, and you’re ready to mix. But that meant we needed delay speakers specifically for the tech booth area.
We installed Meyer X 20 speakers up here—small, high-fidelity point source boxes that work alongside the main system to give the mix engineer and production team an accurate sense of what’s happening in the room. What’s cool is we integrated it so the engineer can adjust the level of these delays on the fly. Sometimes you want it accurate, sometimes you want it quieter so the team isn’t yelling over the music to communicate.
These X 20s are incredibly versatile, by the way—you can use them as delays, front fills, side fills, under balcony speakers, whatever you need. And our install team custom fabricated metal protection plates on the back to protect them from volleyballs and basketballs since this is a multi-use space.
Meyer Sound systems are active speakers, which means each box has its own amplification and processing built in. The result is consistency, reliability, and sound quality that just works. Churchfront is a Meyer dealer and integrator, so if you’re thinking about upgrading your PA system, we can help design the right Meyer solution for your space and get it installed properly.
If you want to talk about what a system like this could look like for your church, reach out to us at churchfront.com. Let’s figure out what actually makes sense for your venue.
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