Indonesia’s Gereja Rehoboth Expands With EAW

The Gereja Rehoboth Church in West Java, Indonesia completed construction on a sanctuary expansion in late 2016. Once finished it was apparent their sound reinforcement system would also need to “expand”. As a long-time EAW customer, the church opted to install more powerful EAW loudspeakers to meet the new sound reinforcement needs created by its increased capacity.

This is the church’s third expansion since its original construction in 1947. It can now seat up to 850 worshippers in the lower sanctuary and upper balcony area. For the last fifteen years, an EAW LA series loudspeaker system provided more than enough coverage in the sanctuary. However, with the additional seating areas, a new solution was required. The church decided to consult their EAW supplier and systems integrator, Kairos Multijaya, to help them design and install a more powerful system that would better meet the larger church’s needs.

Once again, a point source loudspeaker system the recommended solution for the church’s expanded space. This time the system is made up of EAW QX Series loudspeakers.

“You don’t need a line array in such a room,” said Leo Tanzil, VP of engineering at Kairos Multijaya, explains. “The church also had a limited budget, so we decided to design a simple but highly effective system.”

The church has three Sunday services, which are charismatic in nature and includes a full choir, six to eight musicians and, of course, a pastor—all of whom are situated throughout the 52-foot (62m) wide by 19.5-foot (6m) deep stage.

The main PA is made up of left/right, ceiling-suspended EAW QX596i loudspeakers with adjacent hangs of two SB1002 dual 18-inch subwoofers. The QX596i combines four phase-aligned 12-inch woofers with a mid/high compression driver. Even though the QX596i can reproduce frequencies as low as 55hz, adding the SB1002 subwoofer allows for it to reach 28Hz.

With the added balcony and underbalcony areas, fills were required. Two QX396 loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling were installed to reach the people in the balcony. They share the same trapezoidal enclosure design as the QX596i but are scaled down to integrate four 10-inch woofers.

The underbalcony area is covered by six white-finished EAW MK8196 8-inch, two-way speakers fastened to the 9-foot (3m) ceiling. Two additional MK8196’s were added to the lip of the stage for the front fill.

Mounted in a portable rack behind the drum kit are two EAW UX8800 processors, which manage the entire loudspeaker system.

Before the project started, the congregation knew it would be a serious undertaking to exceed the success of their older EAW system.

“We never had a problem with the LAs over all that time and they were working perfectly when we took them down prior to construction,” said Mr. Subianto, the chief engineer for the church. “However, with the enlargement of the room, we needed a higher SPL and perhaps a more modern solution for our needs to ensure adequate coverage.”

It helped that the supplier was aware of the congregation’s standards.

“Although it’s been over 15 years since we installed the [previous] system here, we had a duty to maintain the high expectations of the EAW brand,” said Tanzil.

Fortunately, the installation of the new sound system more than met the expectations of the church’s staff and congregation. Everyone is very happy with the look and sound in the expanded church.