What is the best Projector for my Church?

Quantify whether you have the ability to do a rear projection system.

If you can do a rear projection system anything above 2000 lumens will work. Provided the space behind the projector is enclosed and ambient light can be controlled in that enclosure.

What to look for in a projector:

Minimum Lumens: Rear projection (2000)
Front projection (4500)

Contrast Ratio: >1000

Bulb: Arch type Bulb (not filament)

Minimum Bulb life: 2000 hours

Aspect Ratio: Both 4:3 and 16:9 (widescreen)

Resolution: 1280 x 720 (HD) other wise know as 720p (progressive)
1920 x 1080 other wise know as 1080i (interlaced)

If you can, try to find a projector that has sealed optics.

Panasonic has some new models that are liquid cooled and have sealed optics.
PT-D5500U
PT-DW7000U
PT-DW7700U

Thoughts on the new McCauley M Series Line Array

I recently when to a church service where they had a new McCauley M Series system installed. The configuration consisted of 7 x M-90 modules, 1 x M-120, 2 x MS1 and 1 x AC355 per side. The sanctuary is a 80' x 80' x 26' (WxDxH) with a balcony.

The 2 MS1 cabinets where flown in a separate array next to the main array. I noticed some interesting things (no mids) with lots of sizzle in the high end. They had an acoustic guitar player as well as an electric guitar and you couldn't hear either one. The vocals where not very clear either. Because the array had a vertical coverage of > 90 degrees of coverage, they had some slap back and early reflections in the seating area.

They didn't get as many amps as I thought they should because the boxes are 16 ohm cabinets so they could run up to 6 cabs per amp. This makes it extremely hard to adjust the gain level to the individual boxes to get a good balance in the array pattern (even SPL to seating areas) with that many boxes hooked to the same amp. I sat up in the balcony and it didn't sound full (week coverage) compared to the coverage of the M120s on the downfill (on the floor 3rd row from the front). Overall the best sound was on the floor from the downfill boxes but still no mids.

Believe it or not, this was way better than their old system.
This system would be classified as a 4 way system with the subs included. 2 way out of the M-90 and M120 boxes, third way MS1 box and 4th way out of the sub. The problem here is that the only boxes that are projecting to every seat is the 2 way box. We all know how 2 way boxes behave, they lack mids. The woof can't produce the lower mids and the tweet can't produce upper mids.
While line array systems are a better solution for larger venue (>500 seats), it doesn't guaranty a good system. The clarifiers to a good system are:

1. Keeping sound off the walls and ceiling (no early reflections into seating areas)
2. Full frequency to every seat in the venue.
3. even SPL to all seats in the venue.

The McCauley system installed at this church did not meet any of the above criteria. note: these specs need to be verifiable, not shown with a projected coverage modeler program.
(although the system was better than their old system I predict that they will not be happy with it for long)

The only only Line Array system that I know of that can meet the above criteria is the ISP HDL4210 and HDL4215 systems. They are true 4 way cabinets (5 way when you include the subs) but the important thing is that the each box truly projects full frequency to the seating areas. With 8 speakers per cabinet and dedicated speakers for the lower and upper mids there is no comparison. You have to hear these speakers.

Live Recording - analog, digital, with computer, harddisk style recorder, or mixer/recorder stand alone unit?

When you are ready to start "Live Recording" you will find in your research that you have a lot of options. Which one is the best? First you need to put together a couple of lists. One being the intended audience for the final product (target quality), and how to distribute it (internet, CD, DVD, DVD ROM, etc). Once you got that figured out you can start looking at what equipment and process it would take to do that type of recording. So lets look at an example:

We want to record the pastors message and put it on CD and put it up to the Web Site.
Target Quality: CD = 44KHz / 16 bit Internet = mp3 format

Now comes the fun, what do you use to record? You could use a Direct to CD recorder for example: Tascam CD-RW900/901 Standalone CD Recorders


But then you still have the internet version to deal with. For that its best to record direct to a computer. So for the above need the best solution would be to record to both at the same time. If you need to edit the material before you release it, the answer would be to skip the Tascam unit and record directly to computer and create 2 files when you are done editing. One for the CD distribution and one for the internet.

Next we will tackle: Live Music recording