Martin Audio was recently selected to power audio upgrades to Apex Baptist Church in North Carolina. S&L Integrated implemented the Martin Audio Wavefront Precision line array system for the project.

“We’ve had a long-standing relationship with Shawn Walden, the Worship Pastor at Apex Baptist,” said Gage Helton, director of operations at S&L Integrated. “When they realized their previous audio infrastructure was holding back their worship experience, he reached out to us to design a complete, top-to-bottom system redesign.”

The company said that the primary driver for the upgrade was to enhance overall intelligibility and worship engagement.

“While the church had grown significantly, the old system just couldn’t keep up,” Helton said. “Speech clarity was lost due to a lack of coverage, particularly in and under the balcony sections. The upgrade was also designed to remove previous technical barriers to elevate their Sunday morning experience, building a scalable platform that could support future growth and higher-production events.”

The space serves as a venue for Sunday morning worship as well as special music events, holiday productions, youth gatherings and conferences.

“They needed a system that could seamlessly transition between subtle, high-intelligibility spoken word and high-energy, full-spectrum concert-level reinforcement without distortion or fatigue,” said Helton.

The sanctuary features a large main floor with a deep balcony and highly reflective side walls. S&L Integrated worked to address this by combining physical acoustic treatment on the walls and balcony face with the precision directional array control of a Martin Audio WPS system.

The newly installed system includes flown hangs of 10 Martin Audio WPS elements per side, driven in single-box resolution for precision. A flown center array featuring three SXHF218 subwoofers delivers extended low-end, deployed in a cardioid configuration to help keep energy off the stage. Six Martin Audio FlexPoint FP6 loudspeakers act as front fills, while six FlexPoint FP4 enclosures provide upper-balcony fill.

The entire system is powered by three Martin Audio iKON iK81 and three iK42 amplifiers. Martin Audio’s DISPLAY software was used to model the space and define trim heights, pick points and x/y dimensions.

“The pastoral team immediately noticed that the congregation is engaging more deeply because every word of the sermon and every lyric is clear and effortless to hear,” Helton said. “They’ve told us it has elevated their entire Sunday morning worship environment, which is the ultimate compliment for us at S&L Integrated.”