When Pinelake Church in Mississippi opened their Reservoir Campus in 2003, the church originally had a traditional, full choir and orchestra worship style. Since then, the church has transitioned to a more contemporary style of worship, which pointed out weaknesses and the age of their current sound system. These weaknesses created a roadblock to the overall effectiveness of their services. Pinelake reached out to InteRise of Nashville to seek guidance on designing and installing a new sound system in the church to help connect the worship ministry to the congregation.
“The sound system that was built in 2003 was not adequate for what we are doing now,” says Kevin Hoober, director of worship technology at Pinelake. “Over the course of five years, we were discussing what the new PA would look like, and we reached out to InteRise to discuss options and timelines.”
When Philip Hagood and Wade Russell from InteRise sat down with Kevin to discuss the new sound system, there were a variety of options from different manufacturers that were on the table. One of the main challenges InteRise had to overcome when helping Pinelake choose a suitable system was the low ceiling inside of the building.
“There was a huge challenge with sight-lines because the roof is so low relative to the size of the room and seating sections, so we had to come up with a solution that created quality audio coverage across the room but also did not obstruct the visual space,” says Philip Hagood, general manager at InteRise. “We looked at a number of different manufacturers, but ultimately d&b Soundscape rose to the top of our options because it checked so many boxes.”
Many of Pinelake’s other campuses and facilities have d&b sound systems, so the church knew they chose a high-quality product to be installed by InteRise. Before the project began, the InteRise team went on-site to take a 3D measurement of the space with a Leica BLK360 image lasering scanner in order to produce renderings that would show what the new sound system in the space would look like. The d&b Soundscape system gives Pinelake the tools to mix the audio into the room in a way that creates an engaging and visceral experience while also removing distractions created by traditional speaker systems, so the message is clear.
d&b Soundscape allows for a deeper, intensified connection between the congregation and the worship ministry. The d&b En-Scene software enables object-based mixing and positioning that creates an authentic acoustic reality. It locates and tracks each individual sound object, harmonizing what is seen and heard to bring together what belongs together or pushing them far apart while the d&b En-Space software modifies reverberation signatures to transform the acoustics of any space to suit your needs.
“Soundscape in this application at Pinelake brings the benefit of being able to mix with space and size that’s compelling to the audience while representing every seat in the house equally, which we refer to as object-based mixing,” explains Nick Malgieri, d&b support team member. “This allows the sound engineer to place objects in space and then the sound system re-renders these objects, so everyone hears the sound with proper localization to where the performers are on stage.”
Pinelake has stayed consistent when deploying Yamaha consoles at each of their six campuses. To increase workflow efficiency while mixing, the Yamaha Rivage PM7 console was selected to drive the d&b Soundscape system, as the higher channel and bus count allowed more flexibility while mixing the audio.
“With the new system, the band sounds amazing, and the vocals are easy to understand. That’s so important in worship music to be able to hear the lyrics and sing along, and the same thing is true for the message,” says Hoober. “The soundscape system gives us all of those things wrapped up together.”
At its core, InteRise is here to partner in impacting people by creating customized designs and builds with world-class audio, video, lighting and acoustic systems for churches and corporate spaces, www.InteRiseSolutions.com.
