Daedeok Korean Church
April 1, 2008

The Daedeok Presbyterian Church was established 50 years ago, and construction on a new building was completed in October of 2007. Daedeok is a special district of Seoul designed for science & engineering research established by the Korean government. Accordingly, most of Deadeok Church’s congregation is made up of students and faculty from the surrounding scientific colleges and laboratories, which devoted their talent and knowledge in the building of the architectural sanctuary.

“From the very beginning of the design, I had a vision of the church being a landmark of the Daedeok ResearchArea. I traveled to many of beautiful and artistic buildings seeking inspriration, and working with our architect, we finalized a cost effective yet artistic design.” said the Elder Kim Eun Ka, chairman of the new sanctuary. The sanctuary rejects both rectangular organization and symmetry, similar to the Berlin Philharmonic hall. Its concrete finished wall was influenced by the Opera house in Sidney.

The sanctuary seats 1000 in the main hall and 500 in a multipurpose sub hall. While the sanctuary’s abstract design is beautiful, it makes achieving crisp, clear sound very difficult. The church’s staff closely reviewed proposals with the top 5 industry leading sound companies designs for matching its architecture and decided that Adamson’s SpekTrix line source array system presented by Acoutek was the most suitable.

Sam Toyoshima, who is globally famous for acoustic design, and was called in to solve the problems caused by the sanctuary’s glass wall on one side, the asymmetric balconies and a very high ceiling. He designed a wooden reflector / absorber for better ambience, and installed rotatable pillars which have two different sides; one made of fabric, and other of wood, which are rotated according to material performed.

After listening to many of the top sound systems in various Korean churches, including Adamson systems at the Moohak Church and Suji Yongnak Presbeterian Church, it became clear to Kim Eun Ka that the SpekTrix line source system was the best option for Daedeok church’s main sanctuary.

For each of the two main hangs in the sanctuary, one SpekTrix Sub at the top, six 5 degree SpekTrix enclosures, and three 15 degree Spektrix W’s as downfills were installed. six Adamson 10MX monitors are placed on stage and a Midas Legend 300/48 channel console graces FOH position. The Adamson cabinets are processed by Dolby Lake and powered by Lab.gruppen amplifiers. The multipurpose sub hall has a small installed sound system consisting of two SX18’s and one CB-1 cabinet. This setup is also powered by Lab.gruppen, processed by Dolby Lake and run through a Midas Venice 320 board.



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