Audio & Lighting Integration, New Heights Bentonville

Connections like an old friend that you learned how to play music are hard to find. I met the worship pastor at New Heights Bentonville when I was 14 or 15 years old. At the time, Haden hadn’t ever played guitar, and I had no business doing so. Fast forward over ten years later and Haden is a very talented and headstrong worship pastor at a thriving church and I’m the owner of an audio video integration company geared towards churches. Haden and the team at New Heights were so much fun for my team to work with. Everything from the design phase to the installation phase was so easy to communicate amongst everyone. New Heights Bentonville, in relation to their churches audio and lighting installation, were so open to “take our word for it” as it pertains to the gear needed, the installation process, and operating procedures. Finding a client that let’s you blend their dream with your technical and creative processes makes EVERYONE feel better and more equipped by the time everything is done (and for the post installation relationship). The only major stipulation was time-frame. Everything had to be ordered, installed, and working by the Sunday before Christmas. Luckily, we were able to get everything we needed in a timely manner!

The Challenge With sound

This church is growing fast. Which may be an understatement. The building that they are in was previously occupied by a different church that eventually moved to a different space, leaving this space open for New Heights to snag up. The building was setup in a long rectangular shape, which caused a few issues. Things like speaker throws, lighting, and seating were all affected by this in some way. So what’s the challenge? Just flip the room, right? Maybe, just so happens there are some load-bearing beams that are in really awkward parts of the sanctuary, which didn’t cause us too much grief, as we just worked around them. One thing that caused a slight kink in the plan during the design phase was the existing speaker system. The original plan was to keep their (really large) QSC speaker system and just add boxes. The problem happened when we started looking at speaker coverage. The speakers just weren’t working out. Despite a relatively low ceiling, we ended up being able to get them GREAT coverage with only two PreSonus CDL12-P boxes. Two single speaker arrays on each side of this super wide, shallow room did the trick. We were able to keep the front fill speakers, which moved to the sides of the room, to help with some additional coverage.

Church Sound system installation

The church already had a great workflow with their Behringer X32, wireless in-ears, and p16 units. The only audio purchases that New Heights made with us was the PreSonus CDL-12P units. We ditched the separate mix for a matrix for the sake of usability and volunteer workload. We then tuned the room with white noise and an RTA microphone to ensure that the speakers sounded as close to what PreSonus designed them to sound like. We had no problem keeping the room at around 85db with this setup.

Church Lighting Installation

The church was previously using Jands Vista with an iMac. We switched their team over to My DMX 3.0 from American DJ. This system was a lot easier for their team to use, and allowed them to keep using their iMac and refrain from using a console-based system. We added four new key lighting fixtures to match the existing key lighting. They were already using a blend of Chauvet EVE-50z and Chauvet EVE-50f fixtures, so it was best practice to match these lights. We also installed four brand new American DJ 12H LED bars on the floor level for some added color. All of the other lighting fixtures were already owned by New Heights Bentonville, so we just used those to compliment.

Custom Projector Screens BUILD

We built custom projection screens for the confidence monitor as well as primary projection. The primary screen is 12 foot wide by 6.9’. We also installed, assembled, and configured a custom ProPresenter hub that supports up to four displays without using an dongles or draining your computer of precious resources.

Power Sequencing from JuiceGoose

My favorite addition to any church installation is adding a power sequencing system to save volunteers time when arriving to church. They simply turn a key and the entire system boots up in the proper order. Time to shut down? Just turn the key and everything will power off in the reverse order. This saves so much headache for your team and can also prevent damage to audio equipment that gets powered down or up in the wrong order. We chose JuiceGoose for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that their customer service is INCREDIBLE, along with things like a fair price, easy setup, and easy operation.

Church Tech Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

Nothing drives me crazier than audio video integrators that “oversell” to churches. Some systems are incredibly advanced, and requires an incredibly advanced team to operate. We’re all about those complicated systems, we actually prefer them, but that’s from years of experience in tech. There’s nothing wrong with starting small and working towards more complicated systems as your team can handle them. We specialize in finding a system that meets your teams ability, while training and pushing them towards growth in their ministry. Every church is different, and should be treated as such. For example, we’ll never sell a GrandMA lighting system to a church with 75 people, it just doesn’t make sense. We also wouldn’t sell MyDMX to a 10,000 member church. It’s all about making sure your church is equipped, without ripping you off.