Renkus for church

I have not heard that particular box but have mixed many shows on a Renkus Heinz system which I found to be excellent.

 

So that one speaker is going to cover the whole house?

I don’t know that I’m keen on flying active speakers. If the amp dies in 15 years or so, or the DSP, good chance Renkus won’t be supporting replacements.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Ecclesia: Unique Arrangements of Hymns, P&W Standards, and Original Tunes
Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club #133
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly
My Basses

 

Specs say 129dB peak in whole space. That's pretty loud for a church.

The more important factor will be how dispersion fits the space. 120 degree horizontal dispersion, and I believe vertical dispersion can be varied.

 

there are many 2x8" array boxes out there... so the 2x8 format shouldn't be a concern. Dispersion .. yeah. looking at the existing setup, to duplicate that coverage obviously multiple boxes are called for... what is wrong with the current array ? Could the drivers be upgraded, add good dsp and an amp rack ?

In general, I think a lot of Renkus. I own 6 three way tops and 4 2 way monitors that are Renkus and the stuff is well built. These are passive boxes and I'm running 3rd party DSP with measurements from SMAART.

Another vendor that impresses the heck out of me is K'Array. The level of innovation there is remarkable. I spent a bunch of time with them at Namm. Pre-Corona, I was considering branching into the install market. They are the folks I would have aligned with. Needless to say, that plan is on hold if not completely kiboshed.

 

Wow, nice band! So rare to find a church guitar player who adds something interesting, not just “dumb-strumming.”

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Ecclesia: Unique Arrangements of Hymns, P&W Standards, and Original Tunes
Administrator, Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Tobias Club #133
Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly
My Basses

 

Does this include SPL?

With 120 degrees of horizontal dispersion, if you need more power you would probably go up to the 4x8 or array another 2x8 vertically.

The 4x8 is the ICLive XL and it lists max SPL as 131dB in whole space, VS 129dB for the ICLive X. Not much of a difference. The big benefit is the XL pushes to low end of it's steering limit and pattern control down an octave. That could make a huge difference in regards to clarity if the worship hall has a lot of ambiance/natural reverb.

Beam Control: (X model)
Steerable from 1.5 kHz and up
Directivity from 750 Hz and up
When used singly

Beam Control: (XL model)
Steerable from 750 Hz and up
Directivity from 375 Hz and up
When used singly

I used to mix on a pair of Apogee AE5s on tripods, left and right of the band. Their max SPL is listed a 131dB. Dispersion is 90x45. I don't think I ever pushed them to their limit indoors.

 

You might want to check into Community speaker boxes; they build some world class boxes.

 

This could come down to budget. When you extract this kind of performance from such a small box, they tend to be pretty expensive. If the church can afford two, it may be possible to hang them in a vertical array with programmed presets that can be engaged to nominalize coverage throughout the hall in the event one fails.

 

It's high end gear for sure. Lets see the Ease Focus plot or whatever sort of modeling software they use. Then you will really be able to know the potential of the system

 

That looks like a very powerful and expensive system. The price for the components and rigging could easily be well over $100K. I would think definitely over $50K. It appears there are nine boxes in each array. Pretty sure the system is not JBL; but as an example, VRX932LAPs run for about $2,600 a piece street.

I think it's likely the single Renkus would work fine for worship services providing pattern control can be adapted to the space. If the band is rowdy it may not be enough. But you have to consider the budget, intended purpose, and priorities. The dual line array system in your example would be appropriate for a fairly loud rock show. Probably total overkill for a church IMHO unless music is really the focus of your ministry and they have money to burn.

I would question the efficacy of how the system in your example is installed. The arrays appear to be placed too far back IMHO; although it could be an optical illusion. Do I think this would be a better system. Yes definitely, but can the chapel afford such a system?

 

I am in this business to a degree. If Im going to a customer trying to sell a system I want to provide something that the customer can look at that shows that I've put more thought into designing the system than just throwing something up that looks cool. I'm not saying that the company you are working with is not qualified, but I personally don't like the "set it up in the space and see how it goes" approach. There's a lot more to system design than that, or should be.

Ease Focus is a pretty simple program. If your contractors won't make a plot for you, you could do it on your own as all of the software is free. You just need to know the length and width of your space along with where and how high the system will hang. This gives you a birds eye and side view of what the system can do. It doesn't take barriers reflections(walls/ceiling) into account but can show you the raw energy that the system can produce over a range of selected frequencies. I know that renkus makes files available for use in ease.



Every customer gets one of these when I'm selling an installed system and when I'm specing a system for a corporate event. By going through this exercise it gives me confidence that I'm choosing the correct components and also reassures the customer that I'm not just winging it.

 

A system like this may be complete overkill, or it might be just what they wanted. It's easy to look at it and say that the number of boxes is unnecessary, but there's more to the story at times. The more boxes in an array the better the pattern control, specifically in the mid to low midrange. It's very likely that the flown boxes are throttled back quite a bit and are being used mostly to get a smooth response down to the crossover frequency.