When Suji’s Yongnak Church outgrew its small rented space, its congregation funded the building of a new purpose-built facility with a major sound installation based around an Adamson SpekTrix compact true line source system.

The Suji Yongnak Church congregation celebrated moving into its newly-built church with a special worship ceremony in August last year. The move marked the remarkable growth of the church in step with the general growth of Suji, in the suburbs of the South Korea capitol, Seoul. As the population in the Suji area has increased, so has the demand not only for shopping malls, public centres and entertainment complexes, but also for spiritual worship facilities.

The church began holding its first worship services with just 10 members in a rented space back in 2000. But in just four years, the SYC has raised the necessary finance to build its own church with seating capacity for about 1,000 worshippers in addition to other facilities. The SYC’s rapid growth in such a short time period has garnered keen attention from its neighbouring towns and from among the Korean Christian communities as well.

When the church made the decision to build the new worship facility and to include a professional sound system in the building, it went to Star Sound of Seoul, Korea for the installation contract. Star Sound proposed a main sound system based around an Adamson loudspeaker rig for the church, and the installers’ engineers worked together with Seongnam-based Acoutek (the local Adamson support in Korea) to measure and analyse the acoustic space in order to determine the optimum system configuration for the church sanctuary.

The sanctuary hall at the Suji Yongnak Church is 32m wide by 42m in length with a ceiling height of 12m. Because of the traditional style of service held within the space, the system would have to cater for choir performances and songs of praise as well as spoken word, and required a high degree of intelligibility. Mr Hwang, chief engineer of Star Sound, recalled that, from the outset of the project, he “had to design the main system with a limited budget, and so the best performance-to-cost ratio would have to be considered during all phases of the installation.
“We decided to fly each side array as, from the top, three SpekTrix cabinets, two SpekTrix subwoofers and four further SpekTrix cabinets,” he said, after conducting a thorough survey of the SYC’s sanctuary hall.

Taking into account the dispersion characteristics of the SpekTrix enclosure (which has a 120° horizontal by 5° vertical coverage pattern per element), Mr Hwang said that the engineers determined that the top three SpekTrix boxes would have to be aimed at the upper balcony seats, with the bottom four boxes covering the main floor of the hall. “In particular, considering the sanctuary’s balcony, we rigged two subwoofers between the first and second floors,” he explains. “Consequently, we could deliver good sound to both seating levels and save on expenditure at the same time.”

The emphasis on sub-bass reinforcement also proved effective when considering the frequency range of the types of programme material contained in an average worship service. The Adamson SpekTrix line array system installed for the sanctuary is comprised of a total of 14 SpekTrix enclosures and four SpekTrix Subs, flown left-right on the stage. Amplification for the main speaker hangs is provided by Crown MA-5002VZ/3600VZ amplifiers. In addition to the new aspects of the system, the church re-used existing gear from the sound system it operated at its rented space for cost-saving purposes. From this, four Meyer Sound UPM-1ps are used to cover the under-balcony area, and JBL Eon G-2s are use for monitors. A Crest Audio X4 mixing console, XTA DP226 loudspeaker management system, XTA equaliser and Lexicon processors round out the audio installation.

Simply decorated and without excessive ornamentation, aesthetics were a point of concern in the minimalist worship space. To avoid drawing too much attention to the flown arrays, the loudspeaker cabinets were colour-matched to the interior walls of the sanctuary. The soft beige custom paint finish, which was applied by Adamson at its manufacturing facility in Canada, allows the audio system to blend unobtrusively into its environment. Commenting on the new audio installation, the Reverend Bae of the Suji Yongnak Church said: “Its sound is very clear and smooth. I had been dissatisfied with the old system because there was always a lack of definition and punch on the sermon and praising.” He described the Adamson system as having ‘awesome’ sound quality. “I am totally satisfied with the SpekTrix system, which delivers even and clear sound over the whole area without any dead spots.”

The Suji Yongnak Presbyterian Church has emerged as a leader in the community, and continues to attract new members to its congregation since moving into the new worship facility. The audio installation, meanwhile, marks the first permanent install of Adamson’s latest, ultra-compact three-way line array system in South Korea.

*This article originally appeared in the March/April 2005 issue of Pro Audio Asia magazine

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