Prestonwood's Faith Chapel

Prestonwood Baptist Church is a multi-site megachurch with its main campus in Plano, TX, and a second campus in Prosper, TX. Prestonwood is one of the largest churches in America, with a membership of over 43,000 people. The Plano campus covers an area of 140 acres and includes a 7,000-seat worship center, a 550-seat chapel, a Pre-K through 12^th grade school (including a football stadium, a baseball field, and a field house for basketball and volleyball), a fitness center with outdoor sports fields, a café, a library, and a bookstore. In addition, they have their own dedicated 700-seat Youth Facility that was built in 2004.

Prestonwood reached out to Paragon 360 in January of 2018 for the expansive renovation of the Youth Facility. While onsite for the Youth Facility renovation, Prestonwood approached Paragon 360 about the acoustical issues they were encountering in their Faith Chapel. With seating for 550 people, Faith Chapel is designed to reflect a feeling of casual elegance conducive to creating a comfortable worship atmosphere. Although built in the 21^st century, the traditional architecture harkens back to an earlier era, with stained glass windows, an arched barrel ceiling, and a reverberation time that is well-suited for piano and orchestral music, but highly detrimental to speech intelligibility.

While the classic architecture and design of Prestonwood's Faith Chapel provides the space with wonderful natural acoustics, finding an audio system that could provide complete coverage to the entire Chapel space and reach 500+ congregants had become a major challenge for Prestonwood. Faith Chapel is popular due to its classic interior, but the audio issues within the space were oftentimes a distraction from the events being held in the Chapel, especially weddings, which occur frequently. The Chapel was in need of an audio system that would have exceptional speech intelligibility and precision in coverage, as Faith Chapel has two levels - a main floor and a balcony. Sound from the system needed to cover both levels of seating and be precisely focused, so it wouldn't be lost in the building’s high arched barrel ceiling.

Paragon 360 preserved the classic look of the Chapel while drastically improving the audio quality and intelligibility by installing a state-of-the-art audio system from Meyer Sound that is practically invisible. The new system comprises two Meyer Sound CAL 96 loudspeakers mounted discreetly to the inside of the grille openings, with the beam tilt and spread of one CAL 96 spotlighting the lower seating and the other focused narrowly on the rear balcony. Two very small Meyer Sound UP-4slim loudspeakers anchor the sound imaging for the front rows, while two Meyer Sound 750-LFC low frequency control elements behind the grilles supply low frequency extension.

Despite the forbidding acoustical challenges, the Faith Chapel audio system overhaul far exceeded Prestonwood's expectations. Mark Coble, Audio Design Lead for Paragon 360, remarked “the level of client satisfaction was very high because we accomplished something that seemed almost impossible, and Meyer Sound and their CAL system played a critical role. It was the 100% best solution to a problem for which Prestonwood initially thought there was no possible solution.”