A pair of Jericho Horns from Danley hit the right note at First Redeemer Church in Georgia.
For a long time, First Redeemer Church in Cumming, Georgia didn’t have a purpose-built sound reinforcement system for its stunning 2,200-seat sanctuary. The contemporary band that rocked the morning service, as well as the orchestra and 200-plus voice choir that supported the traditional service, played through the repurposed remnants of a sound reinforcement system that had once serviced their converted warehouse where the church first started.
Years of band-aids and add-ons averted disaster, but the room was so unevenly covered that a foot in either direction was often significantly different, with obvious phasing in the travel. Now, pair of Danley Jericho J1-94s, Danley’s most powerful point-source boxes, deliver stereo imaging with abundant low-end support from a beefy Danley BC-415 subwoofer flown in the centre of the room. “First Redeemer now has the best sounding sanctuary in the world,” averred Scott Oliver, owner of Centerline Audio Visual of Hendersonville, Tennessee. “I would put it up against any other system, at any price!”
Oliver designed and installed the system, with custom rigging and fly-ware by Diekhoff Company. “My philosophy is always to use as few speakers as possible,” said Oliver. “There’s less destructive interference, and fewer alignment issues. Instead of using more speakers for a larger room, I prefer to use larger speakers. A lot of people think I’m nuts for designing Danley Jericho Horns into this, but the results say otherwise. The Jericho offers stunning detail and clarity. It’s very accurate – like a giant studio monitor. With two of them, the stereo imaging is vivid, and it is easy to pick out each and every instrument on stage. Even sitting in the balcony, you can hear the snares rattling and different hi-hat velocities.”
In addition to the two Danley J1-94 loudspeakers and the BC-415 subwoofer, a pair of Danley SH-69s provide down-fill for the first few rows and a pair of Danley SH-46s provide side-fill. An existing Digidesign Venue console is still in use and feeds a pair of Danley DSLP-48 processors. Three new Danley EDA 12k and four new EDA 4.8k amplifiers power the system.
First Redeemer had originally considered purchasing a line array system from another super high-end loudspeaker manufacturer. “We did an entire design and brought in a system to test,” explained Jeff Baggett, First Redeemer’s audio engineer and a Nashville mastering engineer. “It sounded great, and I was skeptical that Danley would be able to touch it. Scott brought over a pair of the Danley Jericho Horns and powered them up. Immediately it was game over. The Danleys ate the other system for lunch. They were tremendously even and had no finger lobes at all. We even matched the EQ curve of the other system to try and make it a fair fight, but the Danleys still killed it.”
