Danley Sound at Cypress Wesleyan Church

Located where the city yields to the farm fields at the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, Cypress Wesleyan Church (CWC) features a congregation of 2,000, and, its services features a contemporary orchestra and 31-voice choir. For years the church limped along with an imperfectly implemented DIY sound system in a room that was far from ideal, in any respect. With capital funds raised, CWC recently constructed a new 1,200-seat sanctuary adjacent to its existing facilities. The church hired Curt Taipale of Taipale Media Systems to design a A/V/L system, and he relied on Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers to deliver on that request.

CWC hired The McKnight Group to build the sanctuary; Summit Integrated worked closely with Taipale to turn the A/V/L system into an ideal reality.

"It was an excellent team," said Taipale. "We were all very flexible and accommodating so that every aspect of the new sanctuary, including its visual aesthetic and its sonic aesthetic, came together perfectly."

For example, Taipale requested that the side walls and back wall be tipped downward to minimize room modes and echoes, and the builders obliged. A modest assortment of absorptive and diffusive wall panels complement the structural modifications to deliver an even reverb, which is lively enough to inspire excitement but dead enough to make the sound reinforcement system shine, aurally-speaking. Taipale's principal challenge was the sheer width of the room. "We originally considered a LCR system, but the budget wouldn't allow for it," he said. "Instead, I designed a mono system arranged in an exploded arc with a delay ring and flown subwoofers."

Five spaced Danley SH-50s cover the main seating area, with a Renkus-Heinz TRX81/9 under each for downfill. Four more Danley SH-50s form a delay ring. Although he considered distributing subwoofers on the floor, his Bose Modeler analysis program suggested a better solution. "I flew four Danley TH-115 subwoofers as a cardioid dipole array," he said. "It would have been hard to offer proof of concept to the church had it not been for the Bose Modeler software, and it would have been impossible to deliver such an impressive amount of clean, undistorted bass had it not been for Danley. The bass really kicks at Cypress." Lab.gruppen C68:4 amplifiers provide power and two Biamp Nexia DSPs provide input conditioning and a modest amount of loudspeaker conditioning.

The Yamaha M7CL was the first choice for the front-of-house console, but tech director Nathan Wurschmidt was drawn to incorporating the Roland M48 personal onstage mixers for the worship team. A brief introduction to the Roland M400 digital console convinced Wurschmidt that it would be both volunteer-friendly and easy on the budget. So the installation includes the Roland M400 along with the REAC digital snake system and just one M48 mixer to start, with the intent to add more mixers as budget allows.

"I'm a huge fan of the Danley sound," said Taipale. "It is remarkably honest, delivering spoken word that is perfectly intelligible and music that is full of definition and life. As a systems designer, I appreciate that the full-frequency Danley SH-series boxes have very well-defined pattern control, down to 300Hz. Within that pattern, the frequency response is smooth and not at all 'beam-y.' A walk across Cypress Wesleyan's new sanctuary is incomparably more even with Danley than it would be with any other manufacturer."

Taipale worked on lighting and projection as well. "The technical director, who I worked most closely with, has a theatre background," said Taipale. "As such, he was very interested in the lighting." Taipale gave him an eight x eight lighting grid above the stage from which to hang fixtures. All lighting is by ETC and includes number of moving lights. Three Sanyo 10,000-lumen projectors complement as many 16 x 9' screens placed nearly edge-to-edge along the back curtain. Summit Integrated designed and installed a very sophisticated video capture system as well.