FEATURE: HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Improving microphone technology has helped to boost overall quality, too. “User-friendly, technologically advanced wireless systems are the new norm in the HoW market,” says Giczy, who cites WMS and Perception Wireless among AKG’s focus products for houses of worship.
2. NEW CHALLENGES On the other hand, changing worship styles can make specifying effective systems more, not less, difficult. Duncan Savage, systems
group manager at microphone specialist Shure, acknowledges the contribution made by developments in DSP and loudspeaker technology, but flags up an emerging challenge for manufacturers and integrators alike. “The spectrum of differing styles of worship now is broader than ever before, and the demands on the audio systems vary vastly between faiths and groups,” he says. “The approach and equipment needed is different in each case; for example, the Greek Orthodox generally need simply speech reinforcement; traditional Catholic and high Church of England may use large organs and a choir; [then you might have] Pentecostal worship venues seating 800 people with a full mic’d band.” Consultants, therefore,
have to be increasingly ready to specify a variety of speakers – including, notes Savage, “steerable columns for speech which minimise the effects of a reverberant space; smaller 3in and 5in discreet cabinets for a distributed approach; traditional 8in and 12in-style cabinets for musicians; and larger line arrays for the more up-tempo churches”. Such contrasting requirements mean that a system designer needs “an array of tools to suit each style of worship, music, vocals and building type”.
Meanwhile, there are some concerns that in the journey to accommodate greater quantities of live performance during worship, the importance of the spoken word is in danger of being undervalued. Graham Hendry, VP of
AETgroup, Applications Engineering & Training at TC Group, pinpoints the central issue. “Today it’s common for the customer to specify the loudspeaker type and placement because they’ve heard and seen a similar system that sounds good with
26 March 2014
‘DSP-based sound
management systems are
helping to ensure systems perform better’
Antonio Ferrari, RCF
music and provides visual appeal,” he says. “It seems that music reproduction has had too much influence over the design of sound reinforcement systems for large spaces. Sometimes speech reproduction has been an afterthought, and the perception that ‘if the music sounds good, so will the speech’ has prevailed.”
3. NEW BUILDS New-build HoWs might look great… but audio-wise, they can still be highly problematic. There is no denying that
new-build churches are frequently dazzling in their size and visual impact. But although one might expect audio quality to be an integral component of modern-day designs, the architect-led nature of some projects can leave it to be something of an afterthought. “Many new venues look beautiful with stone floors and vast glazed walls providing a light, spacious feel,” admits Savage. But there is a definite downside: “This combination of surfaces makes it difficult to provide an intelligible and versatile sound system. If the given purpose of a HoW building is to communicate the message of the faith, then surely a higher priority needs to be given to acoustic design for speech and music. Maybe we as an industry need to do more with the architect community to help them to understand the day-to-day usage and requirements in these places.”
4. NETWORKING HoWs might not always have been on the cutting-edge of audio… but networking will inform the next generation of installs.
Savage is among several who spoke to Installationwho predict networked audio to have a far greater role in the next era of HoW projects. It paves the way, he notes, “for a more flexible audio system, providing useable solutions for the HoW while minimising the need for multiple analogue cables and the associated losses, buzzes, hums and rats’ nest of tangled cables.” He hails the recently published AES67 standard – which was a real talking point at last month’s ISE show – as “a major step forward and will help simplify networked connections between different manufacturers’ pieces of kit”. Apart from delivering as much interoperability as possible, it will probably fall to manufacturers to do more of the same – but even better. “Keep improving the quality!” urges Hendry. In particular, he foresees
declining demand for less conventional distributed systems, but greater call for the aforementioned steering technologies, thanks in no small part to their “lower installation costs, fewer installation/maintenance points, and architecturally friendly” nature. Hendry returns repeatedly to the issue of effective HoW audio design being dependent on “a good grounding in acoustic measurement and computer- based room modelling”. More broadly, there is a feeling that due to a variability in installer design and end-user skills, HoWs may not always be getting the optimum return in performance from their investment.
As so often with these issues, then, it is likely to be education that unlocks the next level of progress. Shure Distribution UK recently had its first HoW Sound
Operators’ Training Day for companies and sound operators, with Savage hailing an “excellent” response and the intention to repeat the exercise in the future. But beyond such individual initiatives, there may be a case for integrators who have put in the hard graft theory- wise to shout it a little bit louder from the rooftops. Last thought to Hendry: “If you’re a contractor or consultant who has invested significant resources into learning audio and acoustics, you should go one step further and market speech intelligibility as a product.”
www.akg.com www.martin-audio.com www.rcf.it www.shure.co.uk www.shuredistribution.co.uk www.tcgroup.tc www.toa-corp.co.uk www.yamahaproaudio.com
MARTIN AUDIO MLA COMPACT HANDLES SPEECH AND MUSIC
A Martin Audio MLA Compact system has been specified as part of a far-reaching audio, video and lighting install at Redemption Church in Gilbert, Arizona, US. The system satisfies the objective of church member and audio engineer Jim Jorgensen for the revamped multipurpose worship centre “to sound as good as it could be”. Ultimately given the go- ahead by lead pastor Tim Maughan, with Jorgensen serving as consultant, the MLA Compact installation was purchased from On Stage Audio following a successful year-long fundraising effort. The actual configuration comprises 12 MLA Compact
enclosures hung in left, centre, right hangs of four boxes each, with two MLX subwoofers mounted under the platform stage at the outer corners. The audio system – which complements an acoustic design by debartolo architects – also includes Martin Audio Merlin Controllers for loudspeaker and network management, with the company’s Display prediction software being used to determine the optimum curvature of the arrays. A Yamaha M7CL 48-channel mixer and custom Whirlwind 64-channel splitter also feature as part of the new set-up.
Technical director Tim Smith and rigger Mike ‘Milk’ Arnold undertook the installation at the newly expanded centre, which holds up to 1,000 members at each of the three services held on a Sunday.
“Sound is always very challenging. If it’s too loud or too harsh, we get a lot of comments,” says Smith. “We have hundreds of older people in the congregation, and this is the first time we’ve done a technical upgrade where we haven’t heard one complaint about the audio. It has worked for everyone across the board and helped them experience the service in a much more meaningful and profound way.”
www.installation-international.com
STUDY CASE
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