Sioux City, IA… Sioux City sits at the navigational head—the most upstream point to which general cargo ships can travel—of the Missouri River. The city and surrounding region often are locally referred to as “Siouxland.” Located in the hilly southeastern section of the city, the Morningside area is mostly a mix of older residential neighborhoods and commercial corridors. The Morningside Assembly of God church is a mere half-dozen miles east of the Big Muddy.
Converted from a gymnasium, the youth chapel at Morningside Assembly of God church seats about 250 to 350 and offers a stage from which an electric praise band performs in contemporary-style services. Recently the youth chapel was updated with acoustic paneling and a new sound system based on TW AUDiO loudspeakers. “The acoustics weren’t bad after we put in the acoustic paneling,” observes Brady Garrison, Operations Manager of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, AV systems integrator Sven Pro, which designed and installed the new system. “We are running in stereo, with three TW AUDiO VERA10 loudspeakers and TW AUDiO B18 subwoofer on each side.”
The TW AUDiO VERA10 employs a 10-inch low-frequency loudspeaker and two 1-inch high-frequency drivers. The combination of TW’s compression-chamber phase plug in front of the 10-inch chassis and the optimized waveformer coupled on the two tweeters gives impressive tonal depth and a brilliant treble with 10-degree vertical dispersion. Horizontal dispersion can be set to 80 or 120 degrees by exchanging the mid-high horn. Designed as a modular system that can be flown or stacked and expanded as needed, it can be a complete small-scale sound solution or part of a much larger system suitable for open-air stadiums and rock concerts.
With the optional PWVERA10 passive crossover, the VERA10 is switchable between passive operation on an amplifier channel and standard biamped, active operation. “The Morningside Assembly of God system is biamped, which provides better quality in the sound overall, since the high frequencies and low frequencies have their own dedicated amp channels,” Garrison explains. “This is the first system we have used with the VERA10, and hearing how it sounded biamped, we’re moving toward implementing that from now on.”
Constructed in a symmetrical bandpass design, the TW AUDiO B18 subwoofer uses one 18-inch low-frequency driver to deliver well controlled, very deep sub lows, ranging from 32 to 160 Hz. Its fully symmetrical enclosure design enables identical performance with all setup variations.
“We were introduced to TW AUDiO by Gene Williams of Frequency Sales in Chicago, and we really got excited when we toured the TW manufacturing facility in Ludwigsburg, Germany,” Garrison recalls. “The VERA10 is proving to be a good fit for us, and we specified it for at least five to ten larger installations, although most of those are in the bidding process. Morningside Assembly of God church is the first project where we pulled the trigger with TW. We’re also doing an installation of the TW AUDiO T20 in another facility. We’re exploring ways to use the whole line.”
At Morningside Assembly of God, the TW AUDiO VERA10s are driven by Lab.gruppen D 80:4L power amplifiers, while the B18 subs are driven by Lab.gruppen D 120:4L amps. The Lab.gruppen amps have integrated Lake DSPs and Dante connectivity, so no external DSP unit is needed. An Allen & Heath Qu-32 digital console completes the core system.
“The Morningside Assembly of God people like the system so much,” Garrison reports, “the worship pastor emailed us to say that they’re working on the design for their main sanctuary, and they want the same TW AUDiO-based rig in there.” “The system sounds absolutely fantastic,” confirms Sven Pro System Design Engineer Curtis McKusick, who designed the system. “I really like the VERA10 and look forward to designing more systems with TW AUDiO products.”