Need help with speaker selection!!

[chrisu7582]

Hey guys. I am the sound guy at our church and we are in need of some speakers and I was wondering if you guys could help me out. First off we are looking at 2 kinds of speakers. The Yorkville E12 or E15 and the Mackie s281's. First question would be which speaker would you guys prefer and why?
The next thing is that our sanctuary is about 75 feet long and around 50 feet wide. The ceiling is between 15 and 20 feet. Closer to 20. We normally seat around 300 to 400 every sunday morning. We are a Southern Baptist Church and we need some good speakers. My price range is anywhere from $400 to $700. I would like to have a good smooth, pleasant sound and was just wondering how you guys would place them and if you would suggest another speaker instead.
We was going to fly them above the stage which is about 20 from the wall but we are open to sugg...Thanks guys and any info would be greatly appreciated..

[[Director] drew ryan]

First off, welcome to the community. Glad to have you here.

OK, now down to buisness. There are a lot of questions that we will have to better help you. Some will suggest that you hire a consultant. It sounds, however, that your budget will not permit that. It also might be that your budget will not permit what you actually need for your room. So, on with the questions.

What kind of worship style does your congregation have? What kind of instrumentation do you use? What kind of mic does the pastor use? Do you already have the power amps for them?

I could not find information on the Mackie S281s.

[cmchamp]

Another question or two.
1: What are the dimensions of the chancel (platform) and pulpit?
2: If this is a cathedral (peaked) ceiling, what is the height of the side walls?
Ok, 3
3: What amplifiers have you to drive the speakers?
Oh, wait, 4
4: Do you wish to run stereo or mono (mono will be best in my opinion)?
Welcome aboard.
You're going to get a lot of opinions on makes and models of speakers, so I'm going to specify that the rest of us play by this rule. Indicating make and model without driver size and horn coverage pattern does our new people little good. Can we please indicate the coverage pattern of the horn in our discussion.
Chris has provided a good bit of information, and we can get rolling on the rest as soon as he can provide us the location of the platform.
The two Yorkville boxes you indicated have a 80x50 horn coverage pattern and can only be flown from the top of the box (two top, 1 pull back), and since they only come in black, that may be an eye-sore to the aesthetics committee.
I won't be able to do any modeling on this today as I'm on my way to an install, but I will as soon as I am able, and will post the resulting coverage plots.
Ok, #5
5: Finish materials of the walls, floor, ceiling, and pews or seats.

Thanks.
C.

[waynehoskins]

Welcome again.

Is that budget total or per box?

Probably the most important advice: only fly a flyable box. I don't remember if the Elite series has flypoints or not, and I don't know that Mackie, but if it doesn't have flypoints, don't fly it. Flyable boxes are unfortunately usually in a slightly higher price bracket.

I don't know if it fits the application or not, but Renkus's CFX series is surprisingly inexpensive, has flypoints, and actually sounds good. Yorkville's NX line as well. There are also some others, but if you have to go budget that's where I'd start looking. Unfortunately those both are in the 400-500 per box category, and if you're in the 400-700 total category, you may well be in a tight spot, especially if that has to include rigging and wire.

But Drew and Cory have some really good questions that will help us figure out better some suggestions.

[Brad Weber]

Drew hit on the main points, I'll add that since you mentioned these would be new speakers it might help to know what you currently have and what problems you are trying to address or improvements you are trying to make. It might also help to know whether the system is mono or stereo, what you have for amplification and signal processing, whether you currently have subwoofers or any other speakers in the system and so on. Information such as the stage and seating arrangement would also help, for example is your stage the entire 50' width or is there seating to the sides?

Keep in mind that it is not just how a speaker sounds to someone sitting right in front of them but also how it sounds to someone in the front corner of the seating and to someone at the rear of the room and everywhere in between, so factors such as the speakers pattern and output may also be factors. And if you are going to fly the speakers overhead, make sure the speakers are designed for that purpose and that you have someone who knows what they are doing and uses the proper hardware rig them.

[WillowStang]

Can you post some pictures of your space?

[chrisu7582]

Hey guys. thansk for your inputs. Im at work so I gotta be quick. i will add more info when i get home. The 400 to 700 is "each" speaker. Total of 8 to 1400.. I am using Crown CE2000 amps. And I would like to go mono on these. It is not catheral and the stage is only about 3 feet high max.. I will add more info later. thanks guys

[chrisu7582]

OK guys. Again thanks a bunch for all your help.. Now, I went to the church and took some pics that will hopefully help you guys out a little. Here are some answers to your questions..
Worship style and Instrumentation use? Well we are a southern baptist church so mainly we have more a traditional service. We have people get up and lead a song or 2, then the choir sings, and most of the specials are off of tape or cd, then the sermon. We do have folks that play guitar, drums, piano and organ though and hopefully through the pics you will be able to see where they are located.
Pastor mic use? Well as of now he switches back and forth from a handheld Shure SM58 to a wireless,LX1 (i think), lav mic, . Just whatever he desires to use for that Sunday.
What kind of amps? We are using 1 Crown CE2000 for the FOH speakers and 1 CE2000 for the monitors. Im sure we will probably have to get some more power soo.
The materials are sheetrock for the ceiling and walls..Carpet floor, and wood backing with cushion seating for the pews. Again, you will see in the pics.
We are capable of spending anywhere from $400-$700. (PER speaker).
Our equipment starts with a Mackie sr32(i think) board. We then are goin into the Behringer ultracurve eq, and then into a limiter compresser, then to a sonicmaximer then to the amps and speakers.
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3628.jpg
This a pic from the old sound room. The keyboard beside the pulpit is only there when our pastor does specials.(amazing player by the way). Notice how the ceiling slopes..At the side walls it is 14 ft. and slopes up to around 18 to 20ft.. Take note of the Bose 802's that are hanging from the ceiling. We are not using those, instead we are using the crates that are on the floor beside the benches. My intial plan was to replace the Bose with the new speakers.
Im going to post the rest of my pics to get you a better understanding of where everything is placed. Oh yeah. The sanctuary is 80ft from front to back. 50 ft wide. It is only 60 feet from the front of the stage to the back wall.
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3623.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3625.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3619.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3627.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/e...2/DSCF3616.jpg.
Hopefully these will help out. Again, I really appreciate it and God Bless you guys.

[cmchamp]

Ok, I've modeled with two different coverage patterns and locations.
60x60 exploded center hung and 90x60 L/R hung, but still mono. Both models use 4kHz band.

[Brad Weber]

I was going to suggest a center array, but from a couple of the pictures it looks like that would definitely interfere with the existing projector and screen. Cory, since you already have it setup, could you look at the results at maybe 1kHz and 2kHz? The Yorkville speakers noted cross over at 1,900Hz and since that is well within the speech range, I wonder how much interaction might occur at the lower end of the horn's response and below crossover.

I am curious as to why the existing Bose speakers are not being used. They may not be the best solution but I have to think they'd be better than the MI speakers sitting on the floor and propped up against the railing. It is difficult to tell details from the pictures, but I would definitely review the speaker rigging before trying to hang a new speaker using the same hardware.

I also suggest planning on getting rid of the Sonic Maximizer and spending some money to have someone qualified come in and tune the system for you.

[cmchamp]

I'm with Brad on loosing the Sonic Maximizer's. They have their purpose in a recording chain, or for causing sub-par systems to sound better by introducing distortion artifacts. In DJ and entertainment systems, that's all fine and dandy, but for a performance system requiring high accuracy of speech reproduction, not a good idea.
I will post the L/R with 1kHz and 2kHz below. One thing that will be more evident is the comb filtering and flutter/comb filtering off the boundaries.
The boxes I used for the models are Community's iBox 12" series and the crossover frequency is 1.5kHz.
I didn't mention the make/model before to keep it neutral, looking for the proper horn pattern coverage.
Regarding the projector, if the roof rafters aren't well anchored to each other in that area, hanging any speaker will cause LF vibration and the projector will 'jiggle' during praise and worship time.
I did not model a sub, although, from personal experience, I would not recommend a Mackie product, passive or active.
C

[cmchamp]

Oh, and for clarification and education.
Though the fundamentals of the speech range begin as low as 100Hz, depending the depth of the voice, the key material from which we discern what's being said come from the 1kHz - 4kHz range. This is where the formants, enunciations and obiculations come from - also known as the overtone series, which form the high frequency energy around our consonants and vowels.
With the L/R configuration, at 2kHz and 4kHz, the ALCONS - % Articulation Loss of Consonants - is as low as 7 in the extreme front and outside, but averages 2 or less throughout the rest of the room, even with room frequency coloring and boundary reflections.
ALCONS and STI (Speech Transmission Index) are measurement tools used to indicate the intelligibility of speech in a room.
With todays performance systems in churches, some do-it-yourself-ers focus too much on the music quality, and not enough of the speech quality. On the other hand, sometimes contractors and design build firms focus too much on speech quality and forget to find out what music program will be going through the system.