In testament to the burgeoning popularity of the Christian faith in South Korea, Seoul has recently dedicated another "super" church. Since its inception in March 1986, Yonsei Central Baptist Church has seen astonishing growth, resulting in the purchase of land at the base of Yonsei's Prayer Mountain, located in the southwest Gung-Dong, Guro-Gu, district of Seoul.
The main construction itself occupies 130,148 square feet of floor space. The construction budget totaled 100 billion won (over $99M US) with AV, including the pipe organ and other instruments, alone budgeted at 4 billion won ($3.9M US).
The entire acoustic design and installation of all audio- and visual-related infrastructure was managed by Seoul-based Dreamsound working in close collaboration with Motive Co., the interior design consultants.
A total of 12 representative rooms required fully featured and high-quality audio systems to be implemented. Park Byung Jun explained, "The most important factor for any amplified source is intelligibility. It was vital for Pastor Yoon's voice to be projected in a clear and intelligible way. The dynamic range of our services is really quite astounding. We needed to have a speaker system that had the capability and capacity to operate effectively over this very wide dynamic range.
An audio shoot-out led to the selection of L-Acoustics' V-Dosc as the principal speaker system for the entire project. In total there are more than 200 L-Acoustics speakers installed within the church. The main Jerusalem sanctuary features two V-Dosc line arrays in a left-right configuration. Each line array consists of four SB218 subwoofers, seven V-Dosc cabinets and, finally, three dV-Dosc enclosures providing down fill. Front fill is achieved via eight MTD-108a passive 2-way speakers cleverly concealed within the steps leading up to the front stage area, while side fill is provided in the form of two pairs of ARCS mounted either side of the stage area. The balcony delays also follow the left-right arrangement and each consist of an array of eight dV-Dosc, while under-balcony delay is provided in the form of four separate arrays to provide an even coverage over the wide seating area, each consisting of four dV-Dosc. For stage monitors, 12 of L-Acoustics' 2-way passive MTD-112b wedge cabinets are available, in addition to six of L-Acoustics' new K-Louver modular directivity technology KUDO cabinets for use as Pastor Yoon's solo monitors.
Looking at the technology available for analog and digital audio transmissions, a decision was finally made to implement the new BSS Audio London BLU-80 signal processors, all fitted with the Peak Audio CM1 CobraNet module. Each BLU-80 allows a maximum of four input or output cards to be installed depending on application and all units within the system were linked via CobraNet, using traditional Cat-5 cabling and industry available network hubs, with system configuration managed via the BSS software design package, London Architect. In addition to providing audio networking and control functionality, the BLU-80 devices were also able to serve as the speaker management systems to the various L-Acoustics speakers installed throughout the church complex. Yonsei Church is, in fact, the first fixed installation in South Korea to utilize the BSS London products.
Three Harrison Trion consoles and two video control rooms, designed with assistance from the South Korean broadcast company, MBC, enable the church to produce its own programming material. A single Cadac 16-channel M16 remote microphone amplifier is also installed within the main Jerusalem sanctuary for use with principal vocals and connects directly to the Harrison via MADI. In addition to providing FOH facilities, the Jerusalem- and Andiok-installed Trion consoles also provide monitor mixes to the stages via stage-side remote controllers.
Power amplification for the entire complex is provided by a mix of over 90 Lab.gruppen amplifiers.
