LITHIA, FLORIDA: Fishhawk Fellowship Church (FFC) brings a contemporary worship style to its 400-seat sanctuary and a welcoming attitude that has drawn together a devout community of worshipers from the Tampa suburb of Lithia, Florida. Like so many mid-sized churches, FFC went in for a “one size fits all” sound system many years ago that, predictably, would have been more truthfully described as a “doesn’t fit at all” sound system. FFC called on Christian Sound Installation (CSI), a Tampa-based AV design and installation firm to remedy their woes. CSI in turn called on a full complement of Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers, subwoofers, stage monitors, amplifiers, and DSP to deliver coverage that is uniform, audible-range fidelity that is musical, and bass that warms the soul.

“They were having all kinds of problems with the old system. It was a mess,” said Paul Garner, founder and president of more

IOWA CITY, IOWA: The Union Bar in Iowa City, Iowa is the biggest bar in the Big Ten Conference and the weekly scene of parties that consistently earn The Union Bar a spot on Playboy’s list of hottest parties in the USA. DJs from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York City regularly fly to Iowa City to host the parties front-and-center from the dance floor’s stage, a stage now both flanked by high-fidelity, abundantly-powerful Danley loudspeakers and moved, literally, by a pack of beefy Danley subwoofers. Apart from the dramatically improved fidelity, which no longer causes patrons to equate “loud” with “painful,” the well-behaved pattern control of the Danley boxes allowed owner/operator George Wittgraf to direct sound away from the bar itself, making it easy for bartenders to hear drink orders where it used to be an often-unsuccessful scream-fest.

“The old system was loud in the worst way more

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: With a 1,500-seat sanctuary, energetic R&B and gospel music, and a popular live Internet stream of its services, audio-visual systems are critical to the success of West End Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Yet the state of its A/V systems left huge “holes” of coverage, vastly underpowered bass response, and many areas – including the entire balcony – where speech was only marginally intelligible. On top of this, visual support – in the form of screens and cameras – was of noticeably low resolution. Gainesville Georgia’s dB Audio & Video gutted both the audio and visual systems, retaining and repurposing many items to help the church’s money stretch as far as possible, and put a new system in place centered on Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers.

Motivated by budgetary constraints and buoyed by the well-intentioned help of volunteers, West End walked a familiar path. Over more

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Iconic indie-rock band Modest Mouse gained its near-legendary status just outside of pop music’s burning spotlight with a series of convention-breaking albums and a rigorous touring schedule that exposed its music to new fans. Despite selling over three million albums to date, the band is still very much in control of its creative destiny, and Modest Mouse concerts have taken on a mystique that draws hundreds of thousands to arenas and festivals during every tour. The band’s production manager and FOH engineer Philip Harvey (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs) fights to balance the tortuous logistics of his first job with the aesthetic rewards of his second job. He counts on Metric Halo’s SpectraFoo audio analysis software to quickly dial in the right balance at soundcheck and to diagnose any real-time problems during the show. He utilizes a Metric Halo ULN-8 interface, integrated with more

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – NOVEMBER 2010: Geoff Daking and Company, Inc. launched the new Mic Pre 500 single-channel microphone/instrument preamplifier module at the 129th AES Convention in San Francisco. Derived from the company’s Mic Pre One freestanding unit, the Mic Pre 500 is designed for installation in 500 Series format equipment. The new mic pre features switchable phase, 20 dB mic input pad, +48V phantom power, and a selectable quarter-inch line/hi-z instrument input.

Like the Mic-Pre One, the Mic Pre 500 shares the gain structure and Class A, fully-discrete transistor circuitry design of Daking’s popular Mic Pre IV. The front panel controls include a variable high-pass filter (0-200 Hz) as well as continuously variable input gain. It also includes an eight-segment tri-color LED meter with simultaneous VU and Peak is included.

Made in the USA, the Daking Mic Pre 500 has an more

DETROIT, MICHIGAN: The Fountain of Truth Church in inner-city Detroit, 9801 Chalmers, recently created a safe place for youth to gather that not only keeps them out of trouble, but provides them with genuinely cool activities and events that are physically, intellectually and spiritually engaging. Dubbed the Righteous Youth Church, the space is flexible enough to accommodate basketball and other indoor sports, as well as performances and church services using modular seating that rolls out from the wall. Detroit-area AV contractor Sound Planning Communications provided the Righteous Youth Church with a new sound system on short notice using Symetrix’ new Jupiter series of “zero learning curve” DSP units, which gives the modest system ideal processing power and required a setup time best measured in minutes, not hours.

“The Righteous Youth Church isn’t trying to be cool, it is cool,” said Nathan Cole, project manager at Sound more

PAYNESVILLE, MINNESOTA – AUGUST 2010: In many ways, Grace United Methodist embodies the enviable characteristics of a thriving mid-sized rural church. Located in downtown Paynesville, Minnesota – population 2,300 – Grace enjoys a congregation of neighbors who support the church and each other with a dedication rarely seen in larger metro areas. But until recently, Grace also had some less enviable characteristics, chief among them an outdated audio system which delivered inadequate coverage to the sanctuary’s 250 seats, and a dynamic range which fell short of their needs and expectations. Intermedia Systems Group, of Burnsville, Minnesota, helped to change that, upgrading everything with a full complement of up-to-date, high-performance equipment, including network-ready Ashly NE-Series amplifiers that allow Intermedia to keep tabs on Grace’s system from over one hundred miles away.

“Grace’s old sound system consisted of a single two-way box placed more

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grill recently opened its doors just a bean’s throw away from historic Fenway Park, home of Boston’s beloved Red Sox. Remy played second base for the club in the late 1970s and early 1980s before transitioning to broadcasting. Fans now know him best for his color commentary during Red Sox broadcasts. His new bar offers a forward-thinking “season pass,” which guarantees its holder a table or barstool at every Red Sox game for a mere $500. Accordingly, Remy and his partners had high expectations for the A/V system. They turned to Boston-based Custom Cable Services, who designed and installed an elegant, effective system centered on a Symetrix Zone Mix 760.

The audio system wrangles a large number of potential input sources, including DirecTV receivers, iPod, iTunes/Pandora, Shure ULX wireless microphones, live web, radio, and TV broadcast. The bar’s audio more

TSURUGA, FUKUI PREFECTURE, JAPAN: Ryokaku-ji Temple is located in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, three-hundred miles west of Tokyo in central Japan. Although it was founded nearly five hundred years ago – literally centuries before the advent of sound reinforcement! – Ryokaku-ji Temple has never hesitated to embrace new technologies. When the temple moved to a new building fourteen years ago, it installed a sound system for the 100-seat hall of worship that promised clear speech and moving music reproduction. But, much to the disappointment of the family that owns Ryokaku-ji Temple that promise was never delivered. Speech sounded boxy and music dribbled out, drained of its vitality. EMU and ENU, a nearby Tokyo-based pro audio sales and sound reinforcement integrator, came to the rescue when the family had finally had enough. Company president Masaki Morimoto designed a new cost-effective system centered on the powerful processing and robust performance of an Ashly more

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: Martin Feveyear formed Jupiter Studios in Seattle, Washington with Christian Fulghum after emigrating to that rainy and musically prolific city from his native England during the height of the grunge movement. A renaissance man for the music industry, Feveyear is a uniquely competent songwriter, musician, studio/mixing engineer, producer, mastering engineer, tour manager and live engineer. He has relied on his very discerning ear to appoint Jupiter Studios with an amazing collection of tools, which now includes a 56-channel SSL 6056 E Series console surrounded by a long who’s who list of classic and contemporary outboard hits. Despite having a range of compressors that any engineer would kill for, Feveyear’s go-to dynamics solutions are the relatively inexpensive Chameleon Labs 7720 stereo compressor and 7802 stereo opto tube compressor. He has used them for both stereo bus compression (mainly in the studio but also live) and killer guitar tone with more