Bose RoomMatch Loudspeakers Allow Trinity Baptist Church to Dial Back the Volume While Increasing Its Reach

	The sanctuary of Trinity Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, featuring a RoomMatch loudspeaker system from Bose Professional Systems. Photo: James Nance, Media Technology Group. 2013

The classic architecture of mid-American Baptist churches is characterized by spareness and utility, with little to distract the eye from the pulpit. However, that same kind of design, featuring hardwood floors and highly reflective walls and other surfaces, can create significant distractions for the ear, as intelligibility suffers from reverberation and echoes. And with the high-frequency drivers in its old PA system faltering, Trinity Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas (in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area), also had to increase the volume to fill its 1,200-seat worship center, adding additional sonic clutter to the already highly reverberant environment. However, RoomMatch loudspeaker systems from Bose Professional Systems were up to the challenge, and that's what Media Technology Group (MTG), an AV systems integrator based in Arlington, recommended to address these problems.

MTG designed and installed a new sound system using four RoomMatch loudspeakers, configured into a single center cluster consisting of an RM12040 module on the bottom, an RM9020 module on top, and two RM9040 modules in the middle, all powered by a Bose PowerMatch PM8500N amplifier. The company says the system was able to overcome all the acoustical challenges of the worship center simply and cost-effectively.

"This system fit the room perfectly," says James Nance, CEO of the Media Technology Group. "It's a difficult space, long and narrow and with a 43' ceiling, making it hard to achieve good intelligibility. The old system was on its last legs, and they were trying to use additional volume to compensate for reach. The new Bose RoomMatch system let us keep the energy off of the walls and the floors and the front of the balcony, all the areas that were causing the biggest reflection problems. It's reduced the intelligibility problems significantly without using any acoustical treatment and using lower volume levels. That's a major accomplishment."