North Point Community Church Strengthens Clarity with L-Acoustics

	The L-Acoustics L-ISA Controller display and DiGiCo Quantum5 console at the church's front-of-house mix position

For North Point Community Church, one of the largest congregations in the US, creating an engaging and uniformly consistent worship experience for every audience member has always been of paramount importance. The non-denominational church in Alpharetta, Georgia, reportedly serves 43,830 people weekly across eight Atlanta-area campuses, and at that scale, keeping the congregation's attention on the message, rather than on speaker clusters, is not a given. North Point addressed that challenge head-on in early 2026 with the installation of an L-Acoustics L-ISA Hyperreal Sound system, deployed by Clark, an L-Acoustics Certified Provider integrator that has served every North Point campus since the central Alpharetta location opened in 1999.

North Point is also the world's first house of worship to deploy L-Acoustics Source Intelligence, a proprietary real-time voice-separation technology that runs as a licensed application on the L-ISA Processor II. Source Intelligence continuously identifies the voice in a microphone signal and removes everything else -- PA bleed, stage noise, room reverb -- delivering clearer vocals and significantly more gain before feedback, without altering the tonality of the input.

"What's taken place at this location with L-ISA is to have made the audio into a consistent spatial experience, no matter where you sit in the room -- literally, all the way from the first row to the back, to the far right or left extreme of the auditorium," says JB Bowling, chief operating officer and principal at Clark, which has installed all three sound systems the venue has had since it opened. "No matter where you are, you're getting the same low frequency, high frequency, and just a great experience that is immersive, clear, and beautiful."

To fully convey the quality of the experience to the North Point team, Clark brought them to a Dallas church of similar size where it had previously installed another L-ISA system, this one using five Scene arrays of one L-Acoustics L2 over one L2D. Clark also brought in a DiGiCo Quantum Range audio console, similar to the Quantum5 found at North Point, through which their own front-of-house engineers and audio supervisors could listen-mixing music and other tracks recorded in their home church -- to give them a preview of what the L-ISA experience would be with familiar program material. It didn't take long to convince them.

"They brought in some of their tracks, built a mix, and then we spent a couple of hours just walking in the space and listening," he recalls. "There are obviously the creative aspects of what an immersive system allows you to do, which are awesome and that they got a taste of. But I think what really sold the L-Acoustics system specifically was the consistency of no matter where you go in the room, you're just getting a similarly great experience."

The main Scene system is comprised of five hangs of L2D, flanked by four Extension arrays of four A10i Focus, two per side. Nine KS28 subs in three cardioid hangs of three are flown behind the center L2D array, and complemented by 17 SB15m "punter" subs spread out in an arc under the curved stage. Spaced out on the steps above the ground subs, plus across the face of the stage thrust, are 17 compact X6i coaxial enclosures used to provide spatialized front-fill.

Two out-fill arrays of six Kara IIi each are flown between the Scene 1/2 and 4/5 L Series arrays to address the far left and right seating areas, with an X8 firing at both of the room's front corners for additional fill. A single X12 flown per side out in the house also provides additional fill for the far back corners of the balcony. LA7.16i amplified controllers drive all of the MF/HF devices, while LA12X drive all of the subs, and an L-ISA Processor II controls the room's object-based mix. Additional components include a P1 processor and LS10 Milan-AVB switches.

"This is a good-sounding room, acoustically, but it does have its geometric challenges," says Bowling, noting the width of the rectangular auditorium at more than 50-percent broader than its depth, stage to back wall. That, he says, would have been a barrier for most conventional PA systems, but not for L-ISA. "More than 80 percent of the seats are fully in the L-ISA immersive sweet spot; we only needed a few fills to reach the remaining few seats at the edge," he says. "For music and for spoken word, the sound of the system is fantastic. No matter where you're sitting, you're right in the middle of the experience."

Luke Roetman, North Point Ministries' production applications director who is in charge of all of the campuses' audio systems, loves the immersive, inclusive effect that the L-ISA system imparts to worship there. "It's been just unbelievable," he says. "I mean, with a full band playing you feel fully immersed in the sound in the room. We have dozens of large rooms in our organization with large stereo PAs, but this is the first time where if I close my eyes, I don't feel like I can even point to a speaker. I feel like the sound is coming from the stage, but I can't tell you where it's coming from because it feels like I'm just immersed in it."

Roetman points out that the immersive effect is dually applicable to spoken word and music, bringing both communicators and musicians into a new level of engagement with the audience. "It's as though there's no longer a space between them," he explains, creating a degree of connection that's impossible to achieve through conventional left-right sound system designs. "When we've got a worship leader standing in the very middle of the stage, it sounds like their voice is coming from the middle, instead of off to the side out of a single line array, as it would with a typical stereo sound system. L-ISA shifts your attention back to the stage instead of toward a speaker cluster. It keeps the focus on the speaker, and by extension, on the message. And that's what church is all about."

In a large, acoustically complex house of worship -- multiple vocalists, a full band, headset microphones working in front of the PA -- the benefits of Source Intelligence are immediate and practical. "It's impressive how much more gain-before-feedback it gives us on headset microphones and how much it cleans up drum bleed in vocal microphones without altering the tonality of the input," says Roetman. "It allows us to get the gain we want out of the mic without worrying about either feedback or other stage noise that can impact the mix."

Fully integrated into the L-Acoustics system workflow, Source Intelligence gives front-of-house engineers mixing on an L-Acoustics PA a groundbreaking new tool to clean up vocals from noisy stages and allow performers to move freely across any stage configuration, including in front of the PA, without risking feedback or sacrificing vocal clarity. Once installed, Source Intelligence requires no threshold setting, no ongoing adjustment, and no changes to the existing console workflow or signal routing. End-to-end latency is less than 8.5 ms over MADI, whether processing is active or bypassed, so that automation and snapshot changes never affect system timing. Full PSU, network audio, and DSP redundancy are standard through the L-ISA Processor II platform.

"Source Intelligence brings a new level of clarity to the message and the music," he adds. "Combined with the immersiveness of the L-ISA system, we now have a truly breathtaking sound system that makes a real difference in how our visitors experience connection here."

For more information on North Point Community Church, visit www.northpoint.org. Clark can be found online at www.clark.is.