With over 3,000 in attendance, it was standing room only at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Greensboro, NC tonight for a city wide celebration of Martin Luther King Day. The service held tonight was the culmination of a full day of community activities celebrating Dr. Kings life.

The power-packed event featured special guest artists Phillip Bryant, Lil' Mo and multiple 2008 Stellar Award winner, Dewayne Woods backed by a one hundred member community mass choir. Dr. John Guns of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida was the featured guest speaker.

The event also marked the debut of Mt. Zion's new sound system to the community at large. The sound system was designed and installed by local systems integrator CareySound. Company owner, Ken Carey, along with Tommy Martin, VP of Sales and John Carey, HE, were on hand to handle the engineering duties for the evening.

System designer, Ken Carey of CareySound and Stuart Schatz of BOSCH Communications faced several challenges in designing the new system. "The 10 year old sound system we just replaced had never really addressed some very serious issues in the room" Carey said. "This sanctuary is not only very wide but is was built completely backward to the way auditoriums are built with the tall part of the room in the front and the short part of the room in the rear end with a balcony. This arrangement effectively funnels all of the sound down into the back rows and presented many more reflective surfaces in the process. This was in addition to a very loud HVAC system" Carey explained.

The original system consisted of a very large, tightly packed, Left-Center-Right trapezoidal speaker system with overlapping conical horn coverage. Additionally, multiple smaller cabinets had been added to the space to try to compensate for the very patchy sound distribution in the auditorium. "With the seat-to-seat variations in coverage and the loud HVAC system they were driving the system hard to try to cover the imperfections in sound distribution in the auditorium and the high sound levels very quickly swamped the room adding to the already complicated acoustics of the space," continued Carey.

The solution to this unique combination of issues was the installation of a precisely focusable Electro-Voice Xlci loudspeaker line-array. Dual 13-element Line Arrays, each consisting of eight Xlci127DVX boxes hung under four Xlci215 subs, flank the stage powered by eight Electro-Voice P3000RL remote supervised Precision Series Amplifiers. "Utilizing the great sounding, high performance, Xlci loudspeaker system with the aid of EV's powerful LAPS computer aided aiming software, we were able to design a verifiably accurate system with complete confidence. All of the issues created by the original 32 box, 29 amplifier system along with the oddly shaped room and loud HVAC system were overcome with the new system. Everybody in the sold out auditorium tonight had the best seat in the house." Carey concluded.

In addition to the new EV house system at Mt. Zion are new monitor speakers utilizing the new Dynacord VariLine loudspeakers. The new wireless microphone system is the EV REV UHF System with RE-410 mic capsules.

Celebrating it's 30th year in business, CareySound takes great pride in offering it's clients the highest degree of expertise and customer service in both sales and specialty audio production services. For more details please contact us by phone at (336) 379-1943 or by email at ken@careysound.com.

This is a very short lesson on trouble shooting your gear before you call for repairs. Lest you think the following three examples trivial or obvious, they account for around 90% of all service calls and are totally preventable. Just in the last week we answered three such calls. causing unnecessary service fees.

1 - Are all of the pieces of the system turned on?

2 - Is everything plugged-in securely?


3 - If something requires a battery (i.e. a wireless microphone transmitter) is the battery good and fully charged?

Of the remaining 10% of service calls at least half of those relate to faulty cables. Bonus tip - Keep all of those cables neat, organized and labeled AND don't cheap out when buying cables spending thousands on the gear and pennies on the wire (unless you are a masochist).

We are not in the business of selling you stuff rather we are dedicated to finding the best solution for your needs. The following just a few of the many solutions that we have provided recently representing examples from the simple to the complex.

Springfield Baptist Church - High Point

This was a very reverberant sanctuary that had been having intelligibility problems for years. We we able to overcome those issues to their complete satisfaction without resorting to drastically more expensive acoustical treatment to the room utilizing a single source center point solution with high directivity.

Mt Zion Baptist Church - Greensboro

We just replaced their system that had never addressed some very serious problems in this room. This sanctuary is not only very wide but is was built completely backward to the way auditoriums are built with the tall part of the room in the front and the short part of the room in the rear end with a balcony. This arrangement effectively funneled all of the sound down into the back rows and presented many more reflective surfaces in the process. This in addition to a very loud HVAC system. We were able to solve this unique combination of issues with a precisely focusable speaker array.

Linda Sloan Theater - Greensboro, Day School - Greensboro

The system we just replaced was designed for general PA announcements and not for the ambitious live theater productions that the theater was intended to produce. For years the audience complained that they were unable to hear the performances particularly in the balcony and during their elaborate musicals with a live orchestra in the pit. The new sound system we designed addressed the only remaining issue standing in the way of this making it the finest performance theater in North Carolina.

Guilford Park Presbyterian Church - Greensboro

This long and thin sanctuary with a highly absorbent ceiling and seating area made it very difficult to hear in the back half of the room. It was either too loud in front or too soft in the rear. We solved this by designing a carefully timed, delayed, distributed sound system.

Aggie Stadium - NC A&T SU - Greensboro

The design criteria is this project was to get very high fidelity sound to the entire stadium that would be loud enough to be heard over a cheering crowd to enhance to very expensive high definition jumbo video system installed in their new scoreboard. It was solved with by working with the sign maker Barco to design a first of it's kind scoreboard that could handle the deployment of a full blown concert sound system.

Corbett Sports Center - NC A&T SU - Greensboro

Just having a PA system to make announcements for a basketball game is no longer acceptable at modern sporting events. A high output, high fidelity, easy to use & maintain and flexible use system was the design specifications for NCA&T's Corbett Sports System. We solved it using zoned high end concert loudspeaker components controlled and monitored with a sophisticated state-of-the-art control system.

We would love to take you on a tour of these facilities and discuss what we can do to provide you with you own solution.

The SoundMan Award for
CareySound.com Evangelist of the Year 2008

Mike Sveda

We would like to recognize Mike for his tireless efforts in spreading the CareySound.com gospel by his countless hours spent on every sound web discussion board, both pro and enthusiast alike, on the internet with the first ever official SoundMan Award. He has racked up more outstanding referrer links in his postings than just about every other site visiter combined. Thanks Mike.

-SoundMan-

Dear Bryan,
There is an old saying in my profession, 'NEVER tick-off the soundman!" Just ask Carl. It's all the way to the top for you and your invention.

I think I speak for all soundmen everywhere when I say, "I won't be retiring anytime soon."

-SoundMan-

Soundman CARL



Dear CARL -
Give'um hell. I'd have used the SoundMan's secret weapon on him too. Push'um all the way to the top!

-SoundMan-