The Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, LA, was the first location and is the now largest of 12 campuses around the world, sharing the same heart and vision of every campus, to be a healing place for a hurting world. The main arena seats up to 3,000 members depending on the seat arrangement on the floor. Worship is led by a full contemporary band consisting of six to nine front line vocalists, drums, percussion, bass, electric guitars, acoustic guitar, keys, and an occasional choir. Healing Place Church now has 24,000 people attending weekly services.
The vision for providing an engaging environment and increasing the connection with the congregation motivated Healing Place Church to upgrade to a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.
Mike and Rachel Haman serve as lead pastors of Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge and oversee all the local and international campuses. Pastors Mike and Rachel have invested over 16 years of ministry into seeing the vision of Healing Place Church expand around the globe and have a desire to empower people in the local church to live a passionate life for God. “At HPC, we want to be big enough to reach the world, but small enough to feel like home,” stated Mike Hamon. “We believe that changing the world starts with serving one person. Through services, outreach programs, small groups, and ministries, our aim is to lift the name of Jesus. Starting with twelve people in 1993, our vision has always been the same—to be a healing place for a hurting world.”
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The Orlando and Pensacola offices of Pro Sound and Video, a Solotech Company, recommended and installed a d&b Soundscape 360 system with Vi-Series loudspeakers. “Soundscape provided immersive sound that engaged the audience from the front to the back,” said David Leuschner, business development, Pro Sound. “Soundscape also helped with sight lines as a traditional stereo line array would have protruded into sight lines. After church leadership listened to a demo and heard how engaging it was, how the sound really made them feel connected, as if they were a part of it, they chose to go that route. Not to mention, using d&b En-Scene and En-Space modules through the R1 Remote software is very easy to operate, even for volunteers, and allowed engineers to develop a 360-degree mix in minutes instead of hours.”
Leuschner said “not only was this an upgrade to the previous listening experience, but it allowed the church to create immersive surround, and point source experiences for their contemporary services, as well as their special Christmas or theatrical services. We chose the Vi-Series because it fit the room best and made it sound so smooth. The system has the power and clarity that we needed and maintained a wide coverage as well. The client had a demo of the system and fell in love with it.”
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“The pursuit to find a new system was driven by the desire for excellence to every seat in the arena,” said John Tillman, technical director, Healing Place Church. “Initially going into it, we thought Soundscape would add those bells and whistles for our big events, but I think it’s had more of an impact on our week-to-week basis than we expected. I feel like I’m now able to produce the sound I’ve always had in my head. And knowing what the congregation’s response used to be and now seeing that response trickle up to the outer edges of the room is just fantastic.”
Soundscape processing adds fidelity and headroom while reducing the burden to the mix engineer. “The speaker system is automatically optimized for every performer separately,” stated Nick Malgieri, advanced systems specialist, d&b audiotechnik Americas. “This allows every speaker to automatically handle a different mix of signals which alleviates issues with fidelity and headroom. The engineer often requires less channel processing and plugins because the system doesn’t require as much mix processing. Adding surrounds then elevates the capabilities even further.”
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En-Space is used on console channels as desired but can also be fed via 8 DPA mics which are suspended from the ceiling enabling the engineer to selectively change the acoustics which are experienced by the crowd. “A noticeable increase in the congregation’s engagement was noticed on the first weekend,” said Malgieri. “Because of the more inviting acoustics provided by Soundscape, the audience felt more comfortable to sing and cheer, something that must be experienced to be understood. It’s also fast and easy to commission. Adding the suspended mics took about 30 minutes to program. Malgieri also added that the ability to route background vocals throughout surround speakers helps people feel included, comfortable, and engaged with the music.”
Pro Sound and Video also installed three DiGiCo Quantum 338s with KLANG for the performers, Touch Screens for MBE KLANG control, and a WiFi network for IPAD control of KLANG, two SD Racks, one SD Mini Rack, WAVES, DMI Dante to send to the Soundscape processor, MGB-P plus relevant WAVES software for multi-track at FOH, Monitors and Broadcast Audio.
