Wave Church doesn’t do anything small. The multi-site church’s Virginia Beach headquarters is an 80,000-square-foot center built around a 2,500-seat worship auditorium. Serving a broad congregation across a calendar that runs from weekend worship to conferences and concerts, the church wanted production sound to match its ambition.
The room itself was the obstacle. The sanctuary is essentially a 180-degree space, wide across the seating and low in trim height, and the church’s previous mono system left dead spots and uneven coverage. The team’s desire was to not only resolve the coverage compromises, but also increase imaging throughout the venue. Every system they had weighed over the years carried the same penalties: many more conventional boxes, recurring line-of-sight conflicts with the architecture, and steep costs. Adding immersive capability on top looked harder still.
“One of the big issues we’ve long struggled with is achieving a stereo image in a room with a wide layout and low trim height,” says Wave Church Production Director Steve “Tig” Tignor.
For the upgrade, Wave Church turned to HouseRight, a house-of-worship AVL specialist, and to an L-Acoustics L-ISA immersive configuration built on L Series loudspeakers. The turning point was the L2D array: its compact form factor delivered the output and clarity the room demanded without the bulk that had caused the sightline problems, finally putting both true stereo and immersive sound within reach.
“The production style at Wave Church is highly dynamic and creative,” says Tony Alany, HouseRight’s Church Relations contact. “In my early conversations with Tig and the team at Wave, balancing that style with satisfying all of the challenges of trim height, volume targets, and coverage were never quite possible with any of the available products at the time—until the release of the L Series. When I saw its reveal event, I knew it was the key to what Wave was looking for. Within three days, I had arranged a trip up to NYC to see the product in person, and there was no turning back. Once they had settled on L2D, L-ISA was clearly the next conversation, which gave them a much wider palette to work with.”
L2D at the Heart of the Design
The installation centers on a Scene system of five L-Acoustics L2D arrays. An Extension system adds four arrays of three A10i Focus over one A10 Wide, two on each side of the main Scene hangs, while out-fills comprise four A15i Focus over one A15i Wide behind the far left and right Scene arrays. Low end comes from nine KS28 subs flown centrally in three cardioid-configured hangs behind the middle Scene array. Out in the house, a dozen X12 serve as delays for the upper stadium seating areas, with eight more X12 spread out across the stage lip as spatialized front-fills. L-Acoustics LA7.16i amplified controllers drive the Scene and Extension arrays, out-fills and delays, while LA12X drive the subs and front-fills, and an L-ISA Processor II handles the auditorium’s object-based mix.
Tuning the Delays to Keep Every Seat in the L-ISA Zone
The room’s wide geometry shaped how the system was configured, and the priority was to keep every listener inside the L-ISA zone, including a ring of seating around the back of the space that the layout made awkward to serve. Rather than simply adding level there, HouseRight used L-ISA to match the front-fills at the front of the room with the rear arc of X12 as imaging delays, carrying the spatial placement that defines the rest of the room all the way to the back row.
“The challenge was getting coverage everywhere and keeping everybody within the L-ISA zone in what is essentially a 180-degree room,” says Alany. “The rear arc of X12 gives us that spatial imaging in the back, so every seat in the house gets the effect.”
A True Spatial Experience for Most of the Room
The result reset what the room could do. Where the old mono system had left dead spots, the L2D arrays now deliver a true spatialized image to greater than approximately two thirds of the room, while the remainder of the space is getting a mono experience superior to a stereo or traditional mono system. The immersive layer from L-ISA sits on top of that. For Tignor, the wide sonic imaging is the headline.
“L2D gave us the power and impact we needed in a much smaller form factor, which resolved our line-of-sight issues,” he says. “Going from mono with dead spots to true spatial for most of the room was a night-and-day difference. The immersive sound is wonderful, but that panoramic image is probably my favorite thing about the system.”
The system also solved a long-standing practical headache. The front-of-house position has always sat slightly off-center, another function of the architecture. With object-based mixing, that no longer carries a penalty: engineers place each sonic element on the stage plane and the system delivers it evenly to every seat.
“If we had gone with a standard left-right line array, we would have had to rearrange the entire auditorium and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to move front of house to the center,” Tignor recalls. “With L-ISA, an off-center mix position simply doesn’t matter.”
L-ISA as a Creative Tool
Beyond coverage, L-ISA has changed how the church’s team creates, giving them a far wider canvas of placement, texture, and movement to draw a congregation in.
“I’m a music producer and was a pastor for years, and I always approached worship the way I would a record, engaging people with dynamic palettes, panning, and reverbs that make it personal,” says Alany. “Now Wave Church gets to do that with a live system, for thousands of people in the same space.”
For more information on Wave Church, visit www.wavechurch.com. HouseRight can be found online at www.houseright.com.
To learn more about L-Acoustics L-ISA, visit www.l-acoustics.com/products/l-isa-hyperreal.
Please visit L-Acoustics at www.l-acoustics.com.