Gereja Mawar Sharon Church at the Pakuwon Mall in Indonesia Receives a New Kara Sound System Gereja Mawar Sharon Church at the Pakuwon Mall in Indonesia Receives a New Kara ...

Gereja Mawar Sharon (GMS) is an apostolic and prophetic cell church founded by Ps. Jusuf Soetanto in 1984. Since then, GMS has developed into a fast-growing church of 100,000 congregations in local churches spread throughout Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and Australia.

The newest GSM congregation recently opened at the Pakuwon Mall in Surabaya, Indonesia. Capable of accommodating 3,332 seated congregants for each Sunday service in the Pearl Exhibition Hall, the new pillarless worship space required an audio system that could deliver the smooth, natural-sounding spoken word and the punch and volume needed for musical performances. Transforming the immense third-level space into a performance space and powerful venue for transmitting the word of God was made possible by PT Berkat Mitra Swara and director Thomsen Phan, who were both commissioned to install a powerful loudspeaker system.

When Kara(i) was demoed over the more compact Kiva II module, the church committee ultimately specified Kara as the main loudspeaker system because they would likely relocate to a bigger venue in the future. The modular, flexible design features of Kara make it a reasonable basis for upgrading later on.

Project Manager Hendra Halim was tasked to design the room’s system and completed the three-week project before the onset of the pandemic. Using Soundvision 3D acoustical and mechanical simulation software, the exact room dimensions and details were input with the varied 16–19 m ceiling height; Halim calculated SPL coverage, SPL mapping and delay coverage in real-time.

The new sanctuary’s system features an L/R configuration comprising nine Kara cabinets flown in each array adjacent to separate hangs of four SB18i 18-inch subwoofers for low-frequency extension. A further six KS28 dual 18-inch bass-reflex enclosures capable of reproducing bass extension down to 25Hz (–10dB) are ground-stacked below the 18m-wide stage. Even coverage has been maintained for seats adjacent to the stage by adding L/R outfills of hanging dual ARCS Focus and single ARCS Wide speakers from a Wi-Fo bump bar.
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The entire system is driven by nine rack-mounted LA12X amplified controllers with an additional LA4X dedicated to powering the eight coaxial 8XT enclosures spread across the stage lip for frontfill. Loudspeaker cabling is routed overhead from the trussed arrays to the amplifier rack located backstage to the large LED display rear. Onstage, sidefill and wedge monitoring duties for the church leaders are fulfilled by L-Acoustics coaxial 112P speakers.

Measuring less than 2dB loss from the stage to the room’s rear, Kara has proven itself to be the right choice for the new Surabaya church. The spoken word is very smooth and natural, and Kara reproduces that unmistakable punch and power needed for musical performances.

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