Martin Audio have provided the essential sound reinforcement in the refurbished Twin Lakes Baptist Church in Aptos, California.

Curtis Kelly acted as the system designer/engineer, installer and contract negotiator, with Lori Burke of Delicate Electronic Sales supplying the equipment and installation support.

The church was built in 1973 in a hybrid theatre fashion. The sanctuary seats around 1700 people, while the stage dimensions are 60 feet wide at the downstage end and 40 feet deep. Proscenium height is 32 feet at the downstage end, with a downsloping ceiling to a height of about 18 feet at the upstage end, while the distance downstage to back of sanctuary is 80 feet.

The surfaces are plaster with minimal acoustical treatment, and as Curtis Kelly explained, the existing audio system was far from adequate for either the church’s present or future needs. “A complete demolition of existing sound system, stage, interior walls and pews was contracted, after which stood only a shell.”

The church’s musical director, Dan Baker, was appointed to seek information on a new sound system, while another TLC member, video producer Kelly Welty, was also drafted into the project to consult on staging and lighting design issues.

Twin Lakes Church was reviewing three other contractors when Curtis was given the opportunity to draft a proposal to meet the audio design base budget of $200,000. “After meeting with the TLC board members we arranged a demonstration of the Martin Wavefront 8C at Delicate Productions, and within 24 hours we were presented with the contract.”

TLC’s Dan Baker takes up the story. “We listened to many different proprietary loud-speakers, and to be honest, we had never heard of Martin. But after the demonstration we were amazed at just how true, smooth and musical the Wavefront 8C system sounded.”

“In order to emphasise the natural sound of the the Wavefront system we had set up one W8C on top of a W8CS, ground supported, and fed a CD player and SM 58 mic into a Yamaha 01R, a BSS FDS-366 Omnidrive Compact Plus and Crest amplifiers,” explained Curtis. “There was no EQ, … just signal in, signal out, and they loved it!”

Another attribute that won the vote for Martin Audio was the simplicity of the product design. “The other proposals were utilising a myriad of specific loudspeaker components to achieve coverage — some featuring up to nine different types,” continued Curtis. “We achieved full and smooth coverage using eight of the W8Cs’ great dispersion capabilities in a typical LCR configuration and six W8CS subs.”

The (non-Martin) stage fills are delayed at 15.478ms — taking into effect the distance from the LCR clusters to the first few rows of seating — the underbalcony speakers at 49.562ms. These times, as well as system alignment and equalisation, were achieved using SIA Smaart Live.

Martin colour-matched the W8 clusters at TLC’s request for aesthetics, with Lori Burke at Delicate a major influence in getting this done.

So much for the performance and aesthetic — but what were the specific requirements of the clergy and how did the audio system fulfil these requirements?

Curtis Kelly: “The system needed to be able to handle large musical productions, as well as be able to accommodate touring productions with minimal interfacing and sub-rentals. It also needed to be able to reinforce church plays and theatre productions, guest speakers and Sunday sermons.”

Furthermore, the system also had to be capable of functioning unfacilitated by inexperienced operators. “We achieved this by using two BSS 9088 Soundwebs and the BSS 9010 ‘Jellyfish’ remote. Presets were designed for full FOH console outputs to the Soundweb’s inputs and other presets — removing the need for a console and operator — while still having the use of music playback, wireless microphones and lectern operation with a push of a button.”

In addition to storing the delay times in Soundweb, Curtis Kelly also has the W8C/W8CS component delay times, phase, EQ, Q, level, crossover HPF, LPF, slope, gain and limit plugged into the 9088’s crossover design.

Floor pockets were also installed throughout the stage, with mic input, monitor speaker outputs, headphone outputs and isolated AC outlets — all this to a custom 56-channel input panel with transformer ISO record split to their recording room, and full 56-channel monitor split.

The sound booth is located balcony centre and the sound mix is generated by resident engineer Karl Heebner and his assistant from a Crest X8 VCA front-of-house console, with 48 (plus four stereo) inputs, eight groups, eight VCA’s, eight Aux’s and four matrix outputs. The FOH rack consists of all industry standard processing.

The result? A future-proofed, high-fidelity system that any house of worship would be proud of.