NewSpring Church in South Carolina, which now consists of eight worship centres spread across the region, is installing L-Acoustics gear in each of its new locations.

With a goal to eventually reach over 100,000 people every Sunday, the Church puts a great deal of emphasis not only on the spoken word – streamed live from NewSpring’s main hub in Anderson – but also on high-energy live music at each satellite campus, which offer concert tour production values and sound levels.

Satisfied with the dV-DOSC set-up installed in its 2,500-seat home sanctuary seven years ago, NewSpring has recently been commissioning L-Acoustics Certified Provider LMG Systems Integration to design and install KARAi systems for the new centres. The Columbia and Greenwood campuses, which both opened earlier this year, are the first to receive the treatment.

The 80,000-square-foot Columbia building has been fully remodelled around a 1,500-seat sanctuary with a house sound system of seven KARAi flown per side, along with a single 12XTi per side for out-fill coverage. Six coaxial 8XTi units are spread across the stage lip for front-fill, with five SB28 subs deployed for the low end. The entire system is driven by a mix of LA8 and LA4 amplified controllers.

The Greenwood campus, which was once a 90,000-square-foot Walmart store, features a similar system for its 1,200-seat sanctuary, comprising six KARAi and one 12XTi per side for out-fill coverage, five 8XTi front-fills, four SB28 subwoofers and a few less LA8s and LA4s.

"The ceiling of our Greenwood worship center is less than 18 feet high, so we had very limited room for arrays, but KARAi fit the space nicely," commented NewSpring Church technical director Joel Yates. "Even with only six cabinets per side the system is capable of absolutely ‘in-your-face’ rock volumes while still producing smooth, consistent coverage. Although the style of music we generally do is worship, it’s often guitar-driven and very heavy on drums so we needed a sound system capable of producing 105dB A-scale while still being clear and transparent.

"KARAi has already proven to be the right choice to standardize on for our newest venues. It’s very smooth and natural sounding for spoken word, yet delivers the punch and volume our musical performances require. Plus, it offers some noticeable improvements over its predecessor, such as a much sharper and more predictable dispersion pattern cutoff of 110 degrees, which can be helpful."

NewSpring and LMG Systems Integration are now turning their attention to the next part of the job – a former Best Buy store in Spartanburg. With a proposed 1,600-seat sanctuary that includes higher 25-foot ceilings, the team is planning to install eight KARAi plus two SB18i per side in addition to the same arrangement of five SB28, two 12XTi and six 8XTi enclosures found in Columbia.

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