Campbellsville University Chapel

Ransdell Chapel at Campbellsville University in Kentucky is an 800 seat chapel complex on campus serving the 2,500 student body with many performances by their music department throughout the year. Single podium microphone gatherings to full scale concerts featuring touring artists, along with the school's full band, choir and orchestra performances require the chapel to be very diverse in its capabilities.

The staff in charge of the sound at the chapel noticed that the ability to even be able to hear spoken words was difficult. There were old conventional speakers and subs misplaced all over the stage. “The subs were mounted in our organ loft behind the stage. The 5 rows of speakers all had to be delayed equally to match. This was nearly impossible. Honestly, the entire system was a poor design from the beginning.” commented Doug Price, audio and visual services coordinator at the university.

The task of rejuvenating the sound in the chapel began with four different sound engineers in the room. “After meeting with all four of them I was able to immediately cut two from the list.” Marc Warling of On-Line Marketing came to Ransdell to demo their Adamson gear: “Once we heard the Adamson system in the room, there was no need to continue with any further demos. Everyone in the room was blown away by what we heard and we started to design the system right then. I had never even heard of Adamson Systems Engineering, but once I heard their speakers it was all over. The demoed system had the clearest speakers I had ever heard.” Price pointed out.

Installation began with eight 5 V x 120 H degree Metrix, two 15 V x 120 H degree Metrix W and two Metrix Sub enclosures flown left and right, with the left-right placement perfectly matching the aesthetics of the room. “[There are] many reflective surfaces, the motivating reason for going with a speaker with such tight tolerances. Adamson really put the sound where we needed it and kept the surfaces free from deflections.” Custom painted white they also matched the color of the chapel to compliment the artistic design. Along with the new Adamson speakers, the chapel re-engineered their entire sound system, including all new wiring & connectors, and as a cherry on the cake, a new Allen & Heath mixing console, all which have proven to be a tremendous improvement according to the staff.

After the installation was completed, the Ransdell chapel hosted the third annual Worship Arts Conference with three concerts in three days, 2 full days of conference speakers, and many worship sets a day. “The Adamson speakers amazed everyone. Several people were impressed by the size of the speaker being able to drive such decibel levels with superb clarity,” Doug Price enthusiastically mentions. “Everyone has noticed the difference. We went from hardly being able to hear the spoken word in the room to hearing every detail in voice and music. I cannot begin to tell you how many compliments I have taken since we completed this installation.”

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