National Treasure? Tomb Raider? DaVinchi Code?

Nope, this exotic local is the Masonic Temple right here in the center of downtown Greensboro. This past weekend it was the location for the Community Theater of Greensboro presentation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson and directed by Adam Sullivan.

Truss Sculpture by CareySound.

The Community Theater’s next performance is Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and will once again be held at the Greensboro Masonic Temple on January 1st through February 8th. Click here for details.

Tags: The Best Christmas Pagent Ever

Established in Brown Summit, NC in 2006 and lead by Pastor Franklin Bowman, Reedy Fork Community Church offers many ministries for people in the of all ages and walks of life in the Reedy Fork Ranch area. They meet each Sunday in the gym of the Reedy Fork Elementary School at 4571 Reedy Fork Parkway in north east Greensboro.

CareySound is privileged to be included in their extended church family as system integrator and tech trainer. They just finished phase one of a system upgrade with the purchase of the new Tour X portable loudspeaker system by Electro-Voice, a new MIDAS Venice mixing console and a new Elation stage lighting system.

Tour X embodies the same engineering excellence and aesthetic design found in every world-class EV tour system. Its form is seamlessly integrated into practical, functional elements that make a bold statement about the multi-application purpose and breakthrough performance of Tour X.

A host of innovative features and patent-pending designs make Tour X the most exciting loudspeaker series available today. Features include:

• Breakthrough SMX woofers achieve incredibly low levels of woofer distortion without sacrificing sensitivity.
• Aesthetically unique, patent-pending Backbone grille design for superior strength and damage resistance.
• Steep-slope analog crossovers with elliptical filters that provide up to 36 dB per octave slopes. 
• All-new, proprietary, EV designed ergonomic handles and angled input panels.
• Floor monitors with patent-pending SST (Signal Synchronized Transducers) for perfect driver phase summation.

All set up and ready for Sunday’s service.

Tags: Reedy Fork Community Church, Electro-Voice Tour X, MIDAS Venice

This is what the Phoenix system from Electro-Voice was born to do. It was created specifically as a high SPL loudspeaker system with tons of sonic headroom for regional sound companies where an X-Array rig is too much and a Qrx rig is not enough. Owner Poa Ly of Upward Sound in Connelly Springs, NC just picked up his new 3 over 2 Phoenix sound system from CareySound. We are pleased to have Poa join us in providing quality audio from BOSCH. In addtion to his new Phoenix boxes he also has a MIDAS Venice, EV monitors, Klark Teknik SquareONE Graphics and Dynamics. Click here for more details on the Phoenix system.

Make sure to call him when you need audio in Western NC. He can be reached at (828) 448-0534.

Poa Ly loads up his new Phoenix rig from CareySound.

Tags: Phoenix

CareySound is a proud member of the North Carolina Association of Festivals and Events. The 20 year old association was formed as a year-round forum for Festival and Event coordinators, key volunteers, and vendors to the industry. NCF&E facilitates information sharing, training, networking, and identification of resources for Festivals and Events throughout North Carolina and serves as a clearing house for information on Festivals and Events staged throughout the year in North Carolina.

CareySound has a long history with festivals in North Carolina having provided production assistance for some of the states most prominent events. Festivals including: Fun 4th in Old Greensboro, Lexington Barbeque Festival, Everybody’s Day Festival, The Heritage Festival, NC Seafood Festival, The Eastern Music Festival and, as recently as last week, The Festival of LIghts in Greensboro.

Please join us at the NCAF&E annual Carolina Showfest 2009 this February 7-9th at the Hyatt Hotel in Greenville, SC. Click here for more information.

Tags: NCAF&E, Festivals

Don’t let this happen to you!

‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Because someone burned down the house...’

C is for Christmas. C is also for Churches and Caution. For A/V systems it’s fire season. Every piece of equipment in the A/V closet is being dusted off and put into use. In the last 10 days, two of CareySound’s church families have already had mishaps. The following are a few of the most common problems we find during the holidays:

• Extension Cords - Use extension cords with great care. Make sure that they are the proper size for the job at hand. Not all cables will handle large loads Particularly if they are long. Never use a cord that is too long for the job. Those nice coils of unused cable build up heat and can melt. Also make sure that they have a third ground lug. Do not use cords with broken or missing grounds. Watch where you place those cables to make sure they are not steeped on or cause a trip hazard. And make sure to throughly inspect cables for signs of wear.
• Electrical Outlets - Even circuit breakers can fail. Do not overload your wall outlets. Most are only rated for 15 amps TOTAL and almost always there is more than one outlet per circuit. Just because there is an open hole doesn’t mean there is adequate power.
• Lights - Even if you don’t overload your electrical outlets lights can cause problems. They can put off massive amount of heat and can cause fires. A light doesn’t have to be in direct contact to cause a problem. Just being too close to another object can cause fires.
• Inexperienced Operators - In addition to becoming more complex, modern audio systems are also growing more powerful. That new capacity needs to be respected and controlled by trained personnel. It’s very easy for audio feedback to do damage to your eardrums and sustained feedback and excessive loudness can cause loudspeaker overloads and in extreme cases fire.

It doesn’t take a soundman to tell this poor speaker was driven beyond reason.
Somebody had to hear this speaker screaming for help
before it flamed out. This speaker was screaming for an intervention.
Please fire your deaf sound man before you burn down the sanctuary.

Remember -
Only REAL SoundMen can Prevent Speaker Fires.

So please use care this Christmas season. We want everyone to have a safe holiday.
This has been a public service announcement from your friends at CareySound.

Tags: public service announcement

A new generation of Christians are foregoing traditional church edifices and modern worship spaces are springing up around the country in very non-trditional spaces. Large institutional church congregations are giving root, and in many instances giving way, to small grassroots collectives of worshipers who, instead of acquiring real-estate and its associated debt, have created homes by leasing “flex spaces”, once the exclusive domain of small business entrepreneurs. Joining this growing movement is Gate City Vineyard in Greensboro, NC. They, among many others, are helping to define a new contemporary Christians worship experience.


Modern keyboard synthesizers, electric guitars and large drum kits supplant traditional church organs as praise teams replace choirs. Tightly interwined in a new partnership with contemporary worship is the very latest in communication systems integration technology playing a pivotal role in this new multi-media experience. CareySound assisted Gate City Vineyard elders in transforming their new space at 204 South Westgate Drive, which is just a few blocks away from CareySound in the Pomona Business Park, into a worship space supplying the design and installation expertise necessary for the job..


The RSS V-System by Roland takes center stage in cutting edge audio system. Utilizing the Roland REAC digital network backbone running on inexpensive and flexible twisted-pair Cat 5e cabling, the V-Mix System takes a complete digital end-to-end system approach to audio distribution and control. It solves many of the problems that plague other digital audio solutions and analogue audio installations and allows for an easily expandable system. It’s not simply a digital replacement of a mixing console, but an entire digital audio system that only needs the addition of microphones and ‘front of house’ stacks & racks to complete the picture. It includes; 48 mix channels, 16 aux/monitor busses, 24 channels of insertable comps, 24 channels of insertable gates, four stereo digital effects processors, 12 system graphic eq’s, a digital two track recorder/player, stage drop boxes AND with the addition of a small laptop computer run wirelessly over Wi-Fi, a complete monitor mix system. Building the new audio system around the Roland RSS, systems integrator CareySound was able to contain costs and create an easy to use experience for the church that is high in features and low in maintenance.


Cutting edge technology is also integrated into the stage lighting system. High output color washes are provided by the new OPTI RGB lighting fixtures from Elation. Each fixtures is lamped with 24 high power 1 watt LEDS and feature full red-green-blue (RGB) color mixing with built in dimming, full remote control over 7 DMX channels, 25° beam angle and 50,000 hour lamp life. It provides exponentially more hours of lamp life than traditional incandescent bulbs which not only save money through electricity charges, elimination of expensive high current dimming circuits, elimination of color gel costs and bulb maintenance, but is also an environmentally "GREEN" product.

Two large projection screens with modern high lumen video projectors complete the multimedia installation.

Tags: Gate City Vineyard, Roland RSS V-Mix, Elation Lighting, OPTI RGB