Gran Carpa Cathedral is a nonprofit religious organization in the city of Cayey in central Puerto Rico. To promote its main objective of spreading the gospel to support a large parish of over 85,000 worshipers, in 2006 the organization began the process of creating the world’s largest outdoor covered congregation. The land where the “cathedral” was constructed has an area of 459,360 square meters – a space equivalent to 4 international soccer fields – and the “roof” is comprised of 42,000 square meters of tensioned canvas. Given the complicated structural setup and large audience seating, management needed a sophisticated audio system to meet all their demands.
K-array was recommended by the sound engineer of the cathedral and, after multimedia director and vice secretary Julio Angel Cruz Fernandez heard a demo of the Firenze-KH7 system, the system was immediately selected as the church’s audio. 30 Firenze-KH7 loudspeakers are paired with 13 Thunder-KMT18 subwoofers and 2 Mugello-KS5 subwoofers to cover the entire cathedral as the main PA. 5 KF12MT loudspeakers are employed for stage monitors and 7 Dragon-KX12 are used as front fill.
All systems were connected using the K-DANTE accessory. The installation and tuning were completed as a combined effort from the K-array distributors for Central America and Caribbean and for the United States as well as team members from K-array Global. However, before the inaugural assembly could take place, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Maria and the island suffered mass devastation. After making many repairs, the congregation will soon be operational.
We are close to the inauguration of La Gran Carpa Cathedral but since the K-array system is already installed we have completed testing and we are extremely satisfied with the performance of the system. In such a difficult venue as ours, we can really appreciate the outstanding sound quality the speakers produce and the different frequencies they can reach. Also given that we have a Dante system, it is amazing that everything works well every time even after we turn it off since it makes discovery so transparent for the user. It’s so easy to deploy. The team from K-array was very supportive of our goals and vision for the installation and for that, we are very grateful.
