Experience Church gets sonic makeover with Linea Research

Based in the shadow of Mount Rainier in Puyallup, Washington, Experience Church is a non-denominational Christian church bringing its message to parishioners via modern music and technology. The 500-seat sanctuary welcomes parishioners with upbeat, amplified music and innovative videos. Installed more than 15 years ago, the HOW’s sound system was showing its age and in need of an update.

“I’ve had a long-standing relationship with this church, having designed and consulted on the original sound system about 15 years ago,” reported Ryan McCauley, principal at McCauley Systems. “Fundamentally, the system is still in good shape, with excellent coverage and impact, but many of the loudspeaker components in particular were approaching the end of their useful lives, and some of the amplification and other electronics were beginning to fail.

With the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, budgets were also a concern. “Since I’d designed the original system, I suggested refurbishing that system rather than replacing it. With the advancements in loudspeaker technology, we were able to not only replace the failing components, but update them with more modern versions, far superior in performance and sound quality.”

The existing line array cabinets – left and right hangs comprising eight dual 8-inch cabinets per side – have been refitted with custom-designed OEM loudspeakers from RMS-Acoustics, and the rack of amplifiers has been replaced with four Linea Research 44C Series four-channel networked DSP amplifiers.

“The Linea amps are immensely powerful and quite simply sound amazing,” added McCauley. “We were able to replace an entire rack of 16 amps with just four Linea units – two 44C20s and two 44C10s – which cuts down on both heat and rack real estate. In addition to the obvious hardware improvements with loudspeaker components and amplification, we also upgraded the signal chain to include a Dante digital audio network. They now have a dual-redundant, primary/secondary Dante network between the console, amplifiers and personal mixer system, improving both dependability and sound quality compared to the previous analogue system.”