Bose® RoomMatch® Sound System Provides Exceptional Directional Control for Heartland Ministries’ New Sanctuary

Sharpsville, Indiana church’s new building had acoustical challenges, and the Bose system helped

solve those problems

Framingham, Massachusetts, January 7, 2013 – When Heartland Ministries opened its new sanctuary earlier this year, in Sharpsville, Indiana, both staff and congregants were thrilled with how the church’s new facility looked. However, its clean lines rely on hard, reflective wall surfaces and a high roof with metal decking – ingredients that make spoken-word intelligibility difficult to achieve because of acoustical reverberation. But rather than compromise aesthetics, Heartland Ministries instead turned to Phil Mitchell, President of the Mitchell Design Group, who spec’ed a system consisting of RoomMatch® array module loudspeakers from Bose® Professional Systems Division. Thanks to the high degree of directional control offered by RoomMatch, the sound at Heartland Ministries’ new sanctuary is so clean and articulate that, in the words of the church’s founding pastor, Dr. William Salsbery, “We now have one of the best sound systems in Indiana. Not merely the best sound system in a church in Indiana – but one of the best in any building in the entire state!” That’s the kind of plaudits that the sound system elicits from users in the HOW market, which has been rapidly embracing RoomMatch loudspeakers for their unmatched capabilities.

The system at Heartland Ministries consists of two RoomMatch RM9010, two RM7010 and two RM12020 array modules, along with a pair of RMS215 subwoofers, hung in two arrays on either side of the room. These are powered by three PowerMatch® PM8500 configurable professional power amplifiers and controlled by a ControlSpace® ESP-88 engineered sound processor using a ControlSpace CC-64 remote LCD controller. The Mitchell Design Group of Carmel, Indiana, installed the system.

Phil Mitchell, also a member of the Heartland Ministries congregation, had explored options from several manufacturers based on his initial designs for the sanctuary’s sound system, but he could not find the right fit that would provide the high degree of directional control he needed to keep the sound energy off of the highly reflective surfaces inside the church. “The church wanted a certain kind of look, and conventional line array systems simply can’t offer the level of pattern directionality that I needed to make this work,” he says. Mitchell first encountered the Bose RoomMatch system while attending the InfoComm Show in Orlando in June 2011, and he immediately saw that the unique pattern-control properties would keep the sound focused and away from reflective surfaces, assuring a high degree of intelligibility while still offering the full-range reproduction needed to keep the system musical. “With the other line array systems we looked at, it was their way or no way,” he says of the limited pattern focusing provided by other line arrays. “The RoomMatch loudspeakers were designed to let me choose from different coverage patterns and find the ones that perfectly fit this room’s shape and size.” Mitchell was also happy with the loudspeaker array’s rigging system, which he describes as intuitive and well constructed. “The RoomMatch system gave us everything we needed, from designing the pattern coverage to hanging the system itself,” says Mitchell. “The technology gives you literally all you need to create a system specifically tailored to your environment.”