West Virginian church equipped with Powersoft technology

Lewisburg Baptist Church in West Virginia unveiled its new sound system, which is driven by three Powersoft M Series HDSP+ETH amplifiers, on Easter Sunday.

Icon Media of Buford, Georgia, designed and installed the church’s new audio set-up, which also features a Renkus-Heinz CF/CFX Series modular point source speaker array, in addition to lighting, video projection, AV recording and web streaming equipment.

Chris Austin, president of Icon Media, chose Powersoft amplifiers for a number of reasons: "Rack space saving, power efficiency that is second to none and Powersoft’s damping control," he said. All Powersoft M Series class D amplifiers offer high efficiency yet minimal weight, in a compact 1RU form factor. Integrated damping control compensates for the DC resistance normally found with low impedance speaker circuits associated with subwoofer or low frequency speakers.

"The overall sound is amazing, the DSP has all the power that we need and the networkability is fantastic," Austin continued. "But one of Powersoft’s greatest assets is Ken Blecher, the company’s executive vice president. He was always available for assistance and to help with any questions that arose during this, and all other projects where Powersoft amplifiers were used."

A Powersoft M50Q HDSP+ETH four-channel amp drives the Renkus-Heinz CF101 mid/high cabinets, while an M30Q HDSP+ETH two-channel amp powers the CF15S subs. The arrays are flown in a left-right configuration above the raised stage in the church’s 600-seat auditorium. A M28Q HDSP+ETH four-channel amp provides power to a pair of wedges, two flown choir monitors and several Galaxy Audio Hot Spot vocal monitors.

Austin is so pleased with the performance and quality of Powersoft’s entire range that the amplifiers are now his first choice for any system design. "We had been using another brand pretty exclusively for the last several years when I heard about Powersoft. The rep delivered some samples to us, and after using the software and listening to them we were so impressed that we decided to switch all of our system specs over; now we’re specifying Powersoft on all of our systems. We have not been disappointed," he revealed.

In addition to the PA system, Icon Media also supplied Sennheiser wireless systems for the pastor and his team, along with Audix wired microphones for the choir. A PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2 digital mixing console that the church had previously purchased controls the entire set-up. Audio from the console is fed to a video switcher that distributes sound and picture to displays in the nursery, foyer and other parts of the building. The AV signal is also recorded into a Mac Mini computer and sent to the web as an H.264 stream.

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