Quick view:
- To protect the church's sightlines and aesthetic interior, large hanging line arrays were ruled out entirely. Instead, Solid Sound Solution engineered a discreet, distributed point-source system mounted high up directly on structural beams to minimize visual impact while accommodating the cavernous 130×80×40-foot room.
- To conquer severe reverberation and maximize speech intelligibility, the design relies on CODA Audio’s HOPS (High Output Point Source) series.
- The expansive speaker network—which includes G18 compact subwoofers, stage monitoring, and auxiliary lobby fills—is centrally managed and powered by just four compact amplifiers: three CODA Audio LINUS V1804s and one V908 DSP amplifier.
Saint Thomas Korean Catholic Center serves more than 1600 Korean families in the Anaheim area. This large church, which can seat more than 800 congregation members and is regularly attended by over 1000, was completed in 2009 and presents a very attractive architectural aesthetic both inside and outside. For some time, though, the church had been experiencing problems with delivering intelligible audio in what is a highly reverberant space, and recently upgraded to a CODA Audio system.
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Its technical team, led by Anthony Lee, engaged with Troy Choi of Solid Sound Solution (SSS), who had come highly recommended by a mutual acquaintance. “The church had been having a lot of issues with sound clarity, especially when it came to speech," Choi said. "It's a very reverberant space, so getting the message across clearly had always been a challenge. They really wanted to improve speech intelligibility and get more consistent sound throughout.”
A big challenge, quite literally was the space itself. Measuring about 130 feet wide, 80 feet deep, and 40 feet high, like many churches of its type, the curch was highly reverberant, so getting clear speech throughout the room was always going to be an issue. The biggest challenge, though, was actually the architecture; the church had what Choi called a beautiful interior, and Father Tony Park really wanted to keep it that way.
With a traditional line array ruled out, Choi and his team needed a point source design which would deliver premium audio while remaining as discreet as possible. Without the possibility to suspend loudspeakers in the space above the congregation, everything had to be mounted high up on the church’s structural beams, making loudspeaker placement yet more challenging. Choi placed his trust in CODA Audio.
“Basically, we had two big goals," Choi said. "Keep the beautiful interior as untouched as possible and still get great sound throughout the church, and to be honest, I had CODA Audio in mind from the very beginning. For a space like this, we needed loudspeakers that were compact but still powerful, which had really good clarity and controlled coverage. In a room with this much reverb, speech intelligibility is everything, and I've always felt CODA is the best for clarity, speech intelligibility, and consistent frequency response. That's actually what I told the church’s technical team at our very first meeting.”
Choi chose loudspeakers from across CODA Audio’s HOPS (High Output Point Source) Series. He felt the HOPS Series was the ideal fit because his team could get the performance they needed without having large speakers hanging all over the church. Using CODA’s System Optimizer prediction tool, Choi's team ran several simulations during the design process and made several on-site adjustments as well.
The final system at St Thomas comprised a main L/R of two HOPS12i with a further two HOPS12i as outfills. L/R frontfills were two HOPS7, with a single HOPS7 as a center front fill. In order to obtain full coverage of the space, six HOPS8i and two HOPS5i were deployed as corner fills, with another five HOPS8i as rear delays. The system was completed with two G18 compact subwoofers and a single HOPS8i for stage monitoring. Two HOPS5i were added as lobby fills. The system is driven by three CODA Audio LINUS V1804 and one V908 DSP amplifiers.
"Compared to our old system, speech is so much clearer and easier to understand, and when we have a band playing, we still get a really full sound with plenty of volume," Lee concluded. "It sounds great."
