NewSpring Springs for L-Acoustics
May 18, 2006 8:00 AM
In only six years, the congregation size of Anderson, S.C.’s NewSpring Church has practically exploded, going from 115 parishioners to nearly 6,000. And so, after finally outgrowing its four packed services every Sunday at the 1,100-seat Henderson Auditorium of Anderson College’s Rainey Fine Arts Center, NewSpring has finally celebrated the opening of its own home—an impressive 103,000-square-foot worship center built around a 2,500-seat sanctuary.
Although there are many reasons for the church’s fast rise in popularity and growth, one of them can certainly be attributed to NewSpring’s edgy, high-octane praise band, which peppers its contemporary worship service sets with songs by the likes of U2, Keith Urban, Switchfoot, and Nickelback.
Consequently, the NewSpring team knew that a traditional “church PA” wasn’t going to suffice for its new sanctuary. The team therefore contacted regional sound company Custom Audio & Lighting of nearby Abbeville to specify a full turnkey L-Acoustics loudspeaker, rigging, and amplifier setup for the room.
“We’ve used Custom Audio in the past to provide sound reinforcement for some of our larger special events, like our Hurricane Relief Concert at the 13,000-seat William A. Floyd Amphitheater last October, and I can’t say enough good things about their professionalism and the quality of their work,” says NewSpring Sound Engineer Joel Yates. “After hearing their V-DOSC and ARCS rig a few times—which sounds amazing, I might add—we knew we really wanted to bring that same aggressive touring rock-and-roll sound here to our new building, so we hired them to design and install a system for us.”
With noted consultant Jim Brawley taking care of acoustic treatments for the sanctuary, Custom Audio A1/Project Manager Tom ‘T’ Brockenbrough mapped out the most appropriate loudspeaker setup using L-Acoustics’ Soundvision realtime, 3D acoustic modeling software.
The resulting system features left and right loudspeaker arrays each comprised of nine dV-DOSC cabinets with a total of four SB218 double-18in. subs flown at the center of the proscenium. Supplementing the system’s low-frequency punch are a dozen dV-Sub enclosures positioned directly under the lip of the stage in the horizontal and vertical planes of the arrays.
For front-fill, eight MTD108a coaxial systems are spread out across the stage lip, with two additional MTD112b coaxials mounted under the massive projection screens flanking the stage to address the far left and right edges of the 140ft.-wide seating area. Power for all of the enclosures is delivered by a combined sum of 18 LA48a amplifiers.
When NewSpring Church’s first worship service in the new building took place on Feb. 12, it was obvious to all parties involved that the right choices had been made. “Between the three services we had in here on our first Sunday, we had nearly 7,500 people come through, and the sound system was just poundin’,” Yates adds. “We’ve been talking about starting to bring in touring Christian artists and, after hearing this rig, I know it’s going to have absolutely no problems meeting rider specifications. I just couldn’t be more pleased right now with both Custom Audio and L-Acoustics.”
