Located in Winterville, NC, Reimage Church recognizes that clean, clear, natural sounding audio is a crucial element in keeping their congregation engaged. As a result, the church recently upgraded their sound reinforcement system to better accommodate the challenges of contemporary worship services. This resulted in the deployment of Constant Curvature Array (CCA) Loudspeakers—just recently introduced by Blaze Audio.
Hi Tech Electronics of Greenville. NC, a design/build AV integration firm with a primary focus on the house-of-worship and education markets, was contracted to design and deploy the new sound system at Reimage Church. Hi Tech Electronics president David Williams, who oversees sales, engineering, and installation of its various projects, discussed the challenges of the job and his reasons for selecting the CCA Series from Blaze Audio.
[I Love It Loud: The Evolution of Loudspeakers]
“The sanctuary at Reimage Church is a large, semicircular space with seating accommodations for 1,200 people,” Williams explained. “The edge of the stage faces directly into the arch of the room, which measures approximately 75 feet from the stage edge to the rear wall. This design can easily create considerable challenges for having consistent sounding audio throughout the entire space—particularly on the extreme left and right sides. This is precisely why loudspeakers with wide horizontal dispersion in addition to well-focused vertical throw were so important, and this was a key factor that led us to deploy the Blaze Audio CCA Series.”
The Blaze Audio CCA10i is a compact, three-way arrayable point source loudspeaker designed for medium-sized venues to large distributed systems that need a flexible, scalable loudspeaker solution. Mounted horizontally with tight acoustic centers to minimize comb filtering, each CCA10i enclosure provides a fixed 20-degree vertical coverage pattern and can be flown with additional enclosures in vertical arrays. The system’s constant curvature waveguide provides unprecedented array coherence along with precision 160-degree symmetrical horizontal pattern control.
“The installation includes three hangs—each with three Blaze Audio CCA10i-BA-B enclosures,” Williams reported. “The center cluster faces straight out toward the rear center of the room while the left and right arrays face into the mid area of the left and right sides. All three clusters are positioned directly over the front edge of the stage area. DSP (Digital Signal Processing) is handled by two Symetrix Prism units: the 8x8 and 16x16 models. Power amplification is provided by six Blaze Audio PowerZone Connect 3004 full-matrix DSP-enabled Class-D power amplifiers. There are two amps per hang point, mounted with a custom bracket that holds the amps on the back of the loudspeaker enclosures.”
“I should also point out that we retained eight WorxAudio UW18BP subwoofers that we installed with the original system back in the 90s,” Williams added. “Like the new Blaze Audio loudspeakers, the WorxAudio sub bass enclosures were also designed by Hugh Sarvis, and this was a key factor that enabled us to retain the subwoofers and mate them with the new CCA enclosures. They all originated with the same loudspeaker engineer. It’s also my understanding that the WorxAudio designs are now the intellectual property of Blaze Audio.”
When questioned about the various attributes that made the Blaze Audio CCA Series enclosures so well suited for this project, Williams focused on their dispersion characteristics. “The clarity and pattern control on the CCA loudspeakers is nothing short of amazing. It doesn’t sound like you’re listening to a box—the sound seems to be everywhere. Speech intelligibility is excellent and music reproduction is as clear and present as I’ve ever heard. Everything sounds so completely natural. Equally noteworthy is the fact that with the Blaze Audio CCA Series, it took roughly half the loudspeakers of the previous installation to deliver superior results. I should also add that the video and stage techs are very happy because this new system doesn’t complicate lines of sight.”
[Sing It Loud: d&b Soundscape Brings Audio Clarity to California Church]
The installation at Reimage Church took place in August 2022 and was one of the very first deployments of the Blaze Audio CCA Series. Since that time, Williams reported his client is very pleased. “Everyone at the church has been extremely complimentary of the new sound system. These loudspeakers speak for themselves. Sonically, the sound is like a breath of fresh air and everyone who hears this new system agrees. I’d also like to add that during the installation, Hugh Sarvis and the other staff members at Blaze Audio were extremely helpful. The bottom line here is that Blaze Audio has some terrific loudspeakers and a great support staff to help ensure the best possible use of the system.”
