— Speaker Coverage · House of Worship
500-capacity house of worship — touring-grade headroom
Problem. A 500-capacity worship space needs 90 dB of headroom for music programme plus speech, even coverage across pews and a system that won't be the visual subject.
Answer. A compact touring line-array (here K-array Mugello KH5) gives the SPL headroom that contemporary worship music demands while keeping the per-cabinet visual footprint to architectural-column scale.
02 / In depth
How this preset reads — the engineering view.
Worship is the application where the audio brief most often outruns the assumed budget. A 500-capacity room with a contemporary music programme is functionally a small venue — 90 dB at the listener with full-band music, not 70 dB of BGM and a wireless lapel.
This preset configures the planner for a 30 × 18 m hall, an 18 m furthest-listener distance and a 50 % power setting on the K-array Mugello KH5 touring element. The Mugello family carries the SPL headroom for the application; you can swap to the smaller KH3 if the venue is closer to 300 cap, or step up to a true touring rig if the room serves regular concert events.
What to read from the output: SPL at listener (target 90 dB; the planner will flag a shortfall as a power increase or box count change), coverage radius (use to determine how far apart left / right hangs need to be from the stage centreline), and quantity (line-array elements come as 2-box left/right minimum; the math reports the planner's rectangular-area approximation, not the final hang).
What is out of scope: subwoofer count and crossover (a separate calculation against the music programme low-frequency content), delays for under-balcony fills, and the structural rigging assessment without which no line-array is ever hung over a congregation.
What this preset deliberately does not solve
- Structural rigging assessment is mandatory and is not modelled here.
- Subwoofer count is a separate decision driven by music programme, not by SPL target.
- Under-balcony / rear-fill delays are common in this scale of room and require their own coverage pass.
How this preset differs from its siblings
The hotel-lobby preset (70 dB, point-source) and the auditorium preset (85 dB speech, install column) both stop short of contemporary worship's full-band music programme. This preset's distinguishing decision is the touring-grade cabinet — the Mugello series exists to deliver 90 dB+ with music low-end headroom, which architectural install columns can't reach. The room is also the largest of the three, which justifies the rigging complexity that the smaller presets deliberately avoid.
03 / Hydrated calculator
Try the configuration — live.
The calculator below is preloaded with this preset’s state. Adjust any input — your URL stays shareable.
— Planner · speaker coverage
SPL, coverage radius and quantity, estimated.
Pick a brand, model and application. An indicative free-field SPL at the listener, coverage radius on the -6 dB axis and a planning-level box count for the room — a starting point for design, not a final specification. K-array, KGEAR, JBL Pro, d&b, L-Acoustics, Fonestar, Ecler.
Max SPL at listener
115
dB · target 88 dB · headroom +24 dB
Coverage radius
25.7
metres · -6 dB axis
Quantity
1
boxes for 540.0 m²
A planning link — not a quote.
- model
- K-array Mugello-KH5 I (active)
- max spl
- 140 dB @1m
- spl at listener
- 112 dB · max 115 dB
- dispersion
- H 110° · V 7°
- type
- powered (active)
- bandwidth
- 120-19000 Hz
- impedance
- active
- coverage
- r ≈ 25.71 m · area 2076.1 m²
Self-powered touring line-array element — two 15-inch woofers and four compression drivers driven by an onboard 4 × 1500 W amplifier, with electronically steerable vertical coverage and onboard DSP. Pair with KH5 elements for concert-scale arrays.
What changes this estimate
- Room drawings & obstructions
- Confirmed ceiling height
- Finishes & absorption in the space
- Final loudspeaker model & dispersion
Feasibility
115 dB max at the listener carries 27 dB over the 88 dB target — comfortable headroom; a smaller cabinet may be more cost-effective.
A planning link — not a quote.
· Other presets for speaker coverage planner
Speaker Coverage · Hospitality
Hotel lobby — background music, 20 × 12 m
A premium hotel lobby needs even, conversation-friendly background audio at 70–75 dB without ceiling speakers that visibly puncture the architecture.
Speaker Coverage · Auditorium
300-seat conference auditorium — speech-priority line array
A 300-seat corporate auditorium needs 85 dB of intelligible speech at the rear row with even SPL across the seating bowl and minimal visual impact.
· Next
Brief us on the project — with this configuration.
Presets are a typology starting point. The brief wizard captures the room geometry, programme and constraints we need to translate this configuration into a real design.