Fiji’s World Harvest Centre turns to Martin Audio

Fiji:

The Christian Mission Fellowship International (CMFI) church has implemented a Martin Audio sound system for its headquarters at The World Harvest Centre (WHC) in Suva, Fiji. Established in 1990, the church’s 30,000 members and missionaries serve in 120 countries across 5,000 churches worldwide, with the WHC round church hosting over 3,500 worshippers, a full band, production and a 100-member choir.

Head pastor Suliasi Kurulo and his production crew turned to Carey Leghorn from CVAV Australia to install a sound system for the church to overcome the challenges of the large reverberant space and the sound quality requirements of the growing sanctuary. Together with Anthony Russo from Technical Audio Group, Leghorn made several visits to WHC to evaluate the scale of the project and create a design.

“We faced several challenges, from working at 15m heights for PA rigging to custom steel fabrication on site,” noted Leghorn. “Additionally, we had to install several kilometres of cables through a complex roof structure. Also, much of the fabrication had to be done in Australia with no room for error once the project was containerised and sea freighted.”

The services are major concert events with 3,000-plus people singing, supported by a full band and choir. Therefore, the system had to achieve SPLs generally associated with an international touring act.

After hundreds of hours of modelling, a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision line array system was chosen. The manufacturer’s DISPLAY prediction software was used to design a 56-cabinet WPM system. The main hang consists of a 32-cabinet left and right system in two-box resolution, along with a 10-a-side WPM operating in one-box resolution mode. The system is underpinned with two stacks of six SX218 subwoofers per side, each individually processed.

The CVAV crew managed to hang a centre cluster and allow beam steering of the sub-cluster, thereby implementing a textbook solution. “It’s extremely rare to get subs in that position in churches, where projectors, sightlines and roof weight loadings often constrain you,” noted Russo.

Eight individually amplified and processed CDD12 two-way cabinets cover the choir stalls. The main console provides a tailored mix send depending on the choir’s requirements. In addition, an eight-cabinet Blackline X12 delay system complements the main PA to enhance the overall experience for the rear congregation and optimise the coverage of the main arrays to the main seating area. Three CDD10 speakers across the stage apron supplement the front rows to complete the main system. The stage is covered by a foldback system comprising six LE100 wedge monitors.