The Jeonju Sion Church has served its local community since its founding in 1975. The church's building, with its traditional red-brick exterior, has stood since 2012. The hall within holds a variety of worship programs ranging from speech, modern live music, choir, and orchestra. After a decade of use, the church's management decided it was time to make plans to upgrade its audio system.
The brick-walled, 1,400-seat hall presented several acoustical challenges, including highly reflective surfaces and a deep audience configuration which meant the back rows were getting speech that was unintelligible. Church management sought a new system that would provide even coverage and SPL distribution from the front to the back of the hall, and enhanced sound quality in the mid and high frequencies for speech clarity.
Sion Church’s management team had a close relationship with local system integrator AnM. A regular project collaborator at the church over the past decade, AnM provided maintenance for the previous sound system. AnM reached out to local L-Acoustics partner Klausys, whom they knew had a resume of providing excellent modern audio solutions for a variety of projects. Together AnM and Klausys demonstrated an L-Acoustics A series system for Sion’s team.
Cheol Jang, technical support engineer from Klausys, relied on L-Acoustics Soundvision audio mapping software to create a design that would evenly cover the entire audience while avoiding problem areas like the reflective walls. After hearing playback of the church’s recordings of live music and sermons, Sion’s pastor also tested the A series system with his preferred live microphone. He was pleased with the system’s pristine sound quality and was convinced that A series was the right choice for the church upgrade.
The L/R array consists of three L-Acoustics A15i Focus and one A15i Wide, topped by one KS21 subwoofer per side. Using Panflex variable horizontal directivity, the Focus boxes were set to 90-degrees to avoid reflection from the walls and to focus sound on the back of the hall.
Jang said: “While mixing live music, the church’s engineer commented that he could recognise a more natural separation of musical instruments. Orchestra musicians also praised the richer sound from the main system array.”