Carrollton, TX--Covenant Church has become the first House of Worship in the U.S. to purchase QSC’s new KLA Series fixed arcuate active line array system, for use across its five Dallas area campuses.
- The new system, which is intended for deployment at indoor and outdoor special events, comprises six KLA12 two-way, 12-inch loudspeakers and four KLA181 18-inch subwoofers. The 20,000-member church also added six K12 two-way, 12-inch active loudspeakers for use as out fill or stage monitors with the KLA Series system, depending on the type and size of the event.
- All the five campuses share the new system, which can be reserved by each location for special events such as dances, seasonal festivals, and music performances.
- Covenant Church bought the KLA System, introduced by QSC earlier this year, based upon their audio departments’ experience with QSC products. “We literally bought the KLAs without auditioning them,” said Slade Goplin, chief technical engineer/project coordinator for Covenant Church’s audio department. “We have some of QSC’s HPR Series and quite a few of the K12s, and we’ve always been extremely happy with the products. So we already believed that the KLAs would be great.”
- Covenant’s audio team got to use — and hear — the new KLA Series System for the first time at the church’s annual Block Party outdoor event in late July. “They set up a big stage and we hung three KLA12 boxes per side off of the truss and had the four KLA181 subs on the ground. When we plugged them in, we were really impressed at how powerful they were – and how great they sounded."
- Goplin and the audio team also took advantage of the benefits of the KLA’s SOLO (Single Operator Logistics) rigging system. “I put the arrays together by myself," Goplin said. "I hung one box by some straps to the truss, and then I just grabbed a second box, held it up with one hand, and put the two latches down. That was it.”
- Like all the K Family Models, the KLA Series features 1000 W Class-D amplifier modules, allowing up to five K Family products to be used on a single 15A/120V circuit. At the Block Party, the Covenant audio team took the chance to test this efficiency first-hand.
- “We ran all the speakers off of four 20 amp circuits," Goplin said. "I thought we’d need more but we just plugged it in and see if we blew any breakers – but we didn’t.”
- The Covenant team also was impressed with the KLA’s ability to withstand a harsh outdoor environment. “We started setting up at 10 a.m. and were all set up by noon, with all the speakers sitting out in the sun, on a 110 degree day.”
- The audio team at Covenant Church already had experience with QSC products to base their decision on. For the past three years or so, they have had a number of HPR 153s with subs in their youth room and a few K10s with subs for the lounge area.
- “There’s something going on in the youth rooms every single day, either music or a band – and believe me, the systems take harsh abuse,” added Goplin. “In all of the places here at Covenant where we use QSC products, we have never, ever had a single issue."
