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Lab.gruppen Praised at Mount Pisgah UMC, Georgia
Westlake Village, CA (July 2008) – Mount Pisgah United Methodist Church has been serving the community of Alpharetta, Georgia (northeast ofAtlanta) for more than 175 years. The congregation’s relatively new 3400-seat sanctuary, an uplifting blend of traditional and contemporary architecture, hosts “updated traditional” Sunday worship services as well as occasional concerts by high-energy Christian artists such as Michael W. Smith, Jeremy Camp, and Steven Curtis Chapman, to name a few. To complement the visual aesthetics with superlative sound, the church recently installed a new system based around three SLS Audio line arrays and seventeen Lab.gruppen C Series multichannel power amplifiers.
The system was designed and installed by Chris Austin of Atlanta-based Austin Sound Design, following close consultations with Mount Pisgahdirector of technical ministries, Keith Frey. Although Austin demoed several different loudspeaker systems during the process, he recommended Lab.gruppen amplifiers exclusively.
“I won’t use anything else on a project of this scale,” says Austin. “The Lab.gruppens work 100% of the time, support is second to none, and they have an excellent computer interface. On top of that, they just sound great.”
The Lab.gruppen C Series complement is anchored by 13 four-channel C 48:4 units, which are used for driving the trio of SLS line arrays (each with rear-flown bass cabinets for low-frequency steering) and the monitor wedges. A pair of four-channel C 28:4 amplifiers drive the rear delay mini-arrays, and a C 20:8x eight-channel amplifier supplies 70V signal to the under-balcony speakers. A massive Lab.gruppen FP 10000Q powers the four dual-18 subwoofers.
According to Keith Frey, the Lab.gruppen amplifiers won immediate approval during the exhaustive demo sessions. “The ultimate benefit for us was the clarity and the sonic performance,” he comments. “That was the number one priority. But we also liked the integration of the amplifiers with the control bridge, and the software interface that allows us to monitor over Ethernet.”
The Lab.gruppen NomadLink controller and network bridge is connected to a wireless access point, allowing Frey to control and monitor amplifier functions using his wireless-enabled laptop computer. “For system calibration and maintenance this feature is priceless,” Frey asserts. “We can walk up to a line array or a front fill and turn individual amplifier channels off and on to evaluate speakers.” Frey also cites the Lab.gruppen’s thermal efficiency as a positive factor. “Units that don’t move their heat efficiently tend to fail under rigorous use,” he observes.
The installation of Lab.gruppen amplifiers and SLS Audio loudspeakers represented one phase of a long-term audio upgrading program at Mt. Pisgah UMC. Other recent additions included a Yamaha PM1D digital console, Audix choir and instrument microphones, and Shure wireless microphone systems.
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