Established in 1961, multi-cultural Willingdon Church located in beautiful Burnaby, British Columbia recently installed a new Q-factor system. In the 1,200 seat House of Worship where musicals, cantatas, weekly sermons, worship services, and concerts are enjoyed by members of the Burnaby Community. Previously to the upgrade with the new Q-factor System, Willingdon Church used Community Speakers, yet felt that there weren’t enough components to reach proper SPL and distribution for their assortment of various activities taking place at a large House of Worship.

After the church demoed 4 different competitor’s line array systems throughout the year, and a recommendation from a fellow colleague, Pastor Ron Clark selected the Q-factor system which he thought would best suit their variety of needs. Pastor Ron Clark commented “After listening to the Q-factor system the first time and then reviewing other line array’s in the industry, it seemed that they were missing something that could not be pin pointed, but upon coming back for a final demonstration with Q-factor, it was apparent that Q-factor fulfilled all sound requirements, and we were convinced it was the right choice.”

Willingdon Church purchased 16 Spektrix Cabinets, four Spektrix Subs, one 15M, and nine 15B’s with Lab.Gruppen Fp and C Series amplifiers. The Church’s Dynacord 12” stage monitors received a Lab.Q-factor. The sound design was created and installed by contractor LTS Worldwide, in conjunction with Willingdon Church’s Audio Technicians Mark Siemens and Kevin Koehn.  Their stereo system design consists of L and R arrays of 8 five degree (vertical) Spektrix cabinets, plus two 15 degree Spektrix W flown at the bottom of the arrays. Low-end configuration has two Spektrix Subs were placed dead center under the stage, and a flown centre cluster of two SpekTrix Subs in cardioid mode. The sub formation is processed separately using factory specified cardioid mode presets. To achieve even coverage  throughout the whole venue, a single 15M was placed on the upper balcony as side fill, and six 15B’s were distributed as under balcony fills on the main sanctuary level, three more 15B’s were installed for a choir fill.  

Feedback from the congregation has been entirely positive, system technician Mark Siemens notes that the evenness in coverage throughout the auditorium was very important: “This system delivers. The quality of the full range sound is superior to the other systems we tested, which makes mixing really enjoyable. The warmth and clarity without any harshness really sold me on this system. We go from choir and orchestra, to rock within the same service, and the Spektrix system performs great for both”. Kevin Koehn was quite excited after being able test drive the system: “I’m very impressed with our new sound system. I like to drive the system a little harder than most, and I have found that it performs flawlessly at higher levels. We also had an opportunity to try out Q-factor’s famous 215 sub-woofer, and there’s only one word that can describe it, “Incredible!!”