Renkus-Heinz Varia system installed in Indiana house of worship

The Church of the Greater Faith in Indiana had suffered for years with poor acoustics and sound, until the recent installation of a Varia system from Renkus-Heinz.

The new set-up comprises left and right arrays, each with three Varia cabinets. "The top box has a 90 by seven degree horn pattern, the middle cabinet has the transitional horn that goes from 90 to 120 degrees wide by 15 degrees vertical, and the bottom unit covers 22 degrees vertical by 120 degrees wide," said Jacob Porche, owner of Porche Advance Systems – the firm responsible for carrying out the project.

"That tapered approach enabled us to cover the entire space without resorting to EQ and processing, and to achieve a remarkably flat response from left to right. There’s not a single dead spot in the sanctuary now."

The congregation’s response to the new system has been extremely positive, according to Jason Ryder, Porche Advanced Systems’ general manager. "They were all singing louder and moving with the music – the energy level in the room was fantastic," he commented.

"With Varia, Renkus-Heinz has developed a system that can truly adapt to any environment," Porche continued. "The system’s variable coverage means it can work in any room, and its modular, expandable design means that the system will not become obsolete once the church moves to larger quarters."

Before the installation of the Varia system, efforts over the years to improve the house of worship’s audio set-up had only made things worse.

"Their original system was poorly designed and underpowered to begin with, and they spent the next 11 years trying to fix it," Ryder explained. "The end result was a patchwork of mis-wired, out-of-phase components, and a room with dead spots and really poor, uneven coverage everywhere."

"They knew they ultimately needed to replace the entire system, but they had been reluctant to do so because they were looking at moving to a larger venue within the next couple of years," stated Porche. "But with Varia, we were able to design an expandable, flexible system that would work for them now, and become part of their new system later. When they build the new sanctuary, these three cabinets will become the bottom three cabinets in a larger, eight-cabinet array. The fact that this was an investment that could grow with them was a huge plus."

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