Epic Church New Jersey

DAS Audio Invigorates Services at Epic Church International

With a mission to change lives for the better, Epic Church (www.epicchurchintl.org) recently upgraded the sound reinforcement facilities in their sanctuary deploying DAS Audio´s Aero and UX Series.

Advanced Audio of New York, an AV design / build firm was contracted to design and deploy the new sound system at Epic Church. After consulting with church management, Burton A. Ishmael, Advanced Audio’s Owner and Chief Systems Designer, ultimately penned a system consisting of Aero-20A compact line array enclosures plus UX-218A and UX-221A powered subwoofers.

“The sanctuary is really quite impressive as well as challenging,” Ishmael explains. “The room is fan shaped and includes a wrap-around (180-degree) balcony. The space measures 150 feet at the maximum spread and the length of the space is 120 feet—with a ceiling height of 40 feet. Seating is fixed and the room’s capacity is approximately 2,300 people. Services at Epic Church include both a praise team of vocalists as well as a full instrumental backup band. Because of this, it was crucial for the new sound system to not only have excellent speech intelligibility characteristics, it also needed first rate music reproduction and the dynamic capability to deliver the full frequency spectrum as well as consistent frequency response with sufficient SPL throughout the space. Further, the ability to control and monitor the loudspeaker system at FOH was a requirement.”

To address these requirements, Advanced Audio deployed three main loudspeaker clusters—left, center, right—each consisting of six Aero-20A enclosures. Further out into the room, there are also two delay loudspeaker clusters for the left- and right-side balcony area—each consisting of four Aero-20A enclosures. For low frequency support,  eight UX-218A subwoofers were deployed—in L/R configuration, behind the left and right Aero-20A clusters. There are also four UX-221A ultra low frequency subwoofers ground stacked in front of the stage in L/R configuration.

According to Ishmael, “These systems have the ability to reproduce music naturally with wide dynamic range and excellent speech intelligibility, critical considerations on this project. Further, uniform frequency coverage throughout the space and suitable sound pressure levels were equally important. The Aero-20A loudspeakers are not only musical, their horizontal dispersion characteristics do a great job providing even coverage throughout the space. Equally important, these loudspeakers don’t interfere with line-of-sight considerations, and this was particularly important because there are left, center, and right LED screens mounted above the stage area. DASnet™ audio management software took care of the networking and monitoring of all components in the system.”

“The entire DAS team was great to work with”, Ishmael adds. “They provided everything I needed to make this project a success—and that includes fast shipping, even during the pandemic. What´s more, the congregation have also commented on how clear and natural sounding the new system is. I believe the church will get many years of service from this sound system. It’s been a rewarding experience for everyone involved.”

For additional information about Advanced Audio of New York, contact [email protected].