The two main issues that churches generally encounter are outsized reflections/reverberation and problems relating to coverage. The first type of problem generally manifests itself when churches try to reconcile the very different (and often opposing) requirements of speech and music. The former demands as little reverberation as possible to achieve high intelligibility while the latter thrives on the warmth that ambient reflections can add to music.
Architectural details like the depth and width of the room (its interior aspect ratio), ceiling height, location of balconies, and interior coverings like carpeting or velour seats all contribute to the challenge of getting useful sound in a church.
This dichotomy becomes even more complicated for churches that have to employ both traditional liturgical music (think Gregorian chants) for which long reverb times are like gravy, and contemporary worship music, whose louder, more staccato nature is best served by short reverb times. The pastor then has to make himself or herself not only heard, but understood, in the middle.The other kind of challenge has to do with getting a sound system to cover seating areas evenly and consistently while at the same time keeping that sound away from walls and other reflective surfaces (which add to the problems created by issue number one). This in particular is where the irregular interior architecture of many churches can underscore the fact that no single design or approach is exactly like another. Architectural details like the depth and width of the room (its interior aspect ratio), ceiling height, location of balconies, and interior coverings like carpeting or velour seats all contribute to the challenge of getting useful sound in a church. Here are a few tales of churches and designers facing these challenges and how they solved them.
Fans of Good Sound
First West Church, in West Monroe, La., wanted to upgrade its PA system to be able to accommodate both traditional and contemporary music styles, so it could avoid having to bring in a rental PA for touring artists. At the same time, it also wanted to find a way to better cover the seating in its large fan-shaped, 1,800-plus-seat sanctuary, where the contemporary service uses both musicians and vocalists while the traditional service uses a 100-plus-voice choir and orchestra.“The 180-foot wide and tall fan-shaped room was designed as a traditional-style building, so there were many architectural reflections, and few useful acoustic panels to minimize this,” states Gwin Edwards, president of American AVL in nearby Ruston, La. Edwards decided on a NEXO GEO S12 sound system, a type they had used in other installations in the region, which enabled the church leaders to experience the system in a worship environment. But it was the configuration that was most critical to solving the church’s sound issues. The original system was a center cluster, supported with some left and right fill speakers that too broadly dispersed the sound in the space. With the NEXO system, Edwards designed a more formal L-C-R system that would provide both a balanced stereo image for music and a center speaker for intelligible speech. (Interestingly, the old system’s speakers were disconnected and left in place; Edwards says the cost of removing them and filling the 20-foot-wide soffits they occupied was neither technically warranted nor esthetically necessary. The old system’s amplifiers, however, were removed and repurposed elsewhere in the building.)
The new system’s 30 boxes, including eight RS18 Ray subs, are powered by 10 NEXO NXAmps. “Three arrays are setup as ‘stereo-plus-mono,’ so the music and effects can be routed stereo while vocals stay centered,” Edwards explains, noting that they used the NEXO NS-1 predictive-modeling software to position the boxes. “There are also side fills on the outside of the stereo arrays to provide ‘near-stereo’ fill to the extreme outsides, while maintaining sonic image. There are two cardioid sub arrays, in a stereo/left-right configuration, to beam-steer the bass energy more evenly across [the] room, instead of just down the center.”The system solution was complemented with an acoustical one. The existing acoustical treatments in the church didn’t offer enough surface area and were only one-inch thick, which would barely cover an octave. Edwards replaced them with four-inch deep Perdue Acoustics Rockwool panels that are far more absorbent.“Fortunately, as part of the latest system update, the church leaders told us to do whatever was necessary to correct the acoustics,” Edwards says. During renovation, he says they were able to notice the difference in the sound quality on the updated half of the room compared to the side that still had the old treatment. “It was easy to notice that all of the old echoes and excessive liveness were now gone on the newly treated side,” he recalls. “Once the other side and rear were completed, we were even more impressed with the room’s new acoustics.”Ultimately, any useful solution will involve a combination of system hardware and acoustical treatments, Edwards emphasizes. “Finding the right balance between them is the trick.”
Check Your Personality
There are other important kinds of balances that need to be discovered for HOW sound system designs. AV consultancy Idibri, in Dallas, does the equivalent of a personality profile as it prepares to start a design project, seeking to establish what a church is now and what it wants or expects to be, and when.“The biggest challenge in a church is often discovering and reconciling competing goals,” explains Ryan Knox, Idibri’s senior consultant, noting that some churches that today have traditional worship styles may be looking to move to more contemporary ones as their local demographics change. What those future demographics might be and how quickly that change may occur will contribute to what kind of sound system will work best for them. Profiling the church will provide some insight into what its AV needs are now and what they might evolve into, says Knox. “Often, what we discover surprises the church,” he says. “But sometimes the solutions are more apparent to outsiders.”This approach tends to work best with new-construction projects; however, says Knox, it can also be applied to renovations. In those cases, they’re often called in because a church is in the process of changing its worship style. In those cases, solutions may involve more than hardware and acoustic—the visual esthetics of the sound system, and all of the AVL technology, for that matter, needs to be included in the redesign process. “Some churches may want to signal a significant shift in style by making the technology more immediately visible, with speakers clearly seen,” he says. “Others may want to make the shift more subtle. That’s as important as the choice of what systems to choose and where to install them.”
On the Beam
Steerable-beam sound systems, which direct audio from loudspeakers to a specific location in a listening area by changing the magnitude and phase of two or more loudspeakers installed in a column, have been around for a while. But their number and range has increased in recent years while they’ve also become more affordable. They’re good options for many HOWs because they solve some very specific problems. Syracuse University’s 85-year-old Hendricks Chapel in Syracuse, N.Y., is a Greco-Roman-style building that hosts a variety of events, from weddings, services and lectures to choir performances and other music events, and audiences there can range from intimate gatherings of 100 to major events with more than 1,000 people. At the same time, it’s also an architectural gem and one with many of the acoustical issues of those types of buildings.“The chancel is deep behind the pulpit so we couldn’t hide speakers back there, but aesthetically they couldn’t tolerate the suspension of speakers in front of the chancel,” explains David May, owner of DCI Sound of Marcellus, N.Y., which has worked with the university on projects for several years. “The only other alternative was the placement of speakers on either side of the proscenium. However, placing them there at a height high enough to make most conventional speakers less visible would have impeded their ability to cover the area under the balcony, and placing them low enough to avoid that would make them too aesthetically obvious.”
The solution, says May, was to use speakers whose output could be very precisely aimed and that also were as low profile as possible. He chose Renkus-Heinz’s columnar Iconyx Gen5 IC24-RN digitally steerable line arrays, mounted on each side of the proscenium. “Because we can choose the location of multiple beams, we were able to mount the arrays up high, getting the beams above the lectern mics,” May explains. “That also improved gain before feedback.” May used Renkus-Heinz’s RHAON (or Renkus-Heinz Audio Operation Network) software, a measurement and DSP system that uses a combination of parametric EQ, delay and other parameter control to be able to fine-tune each loudspeaker for a specific location and intensity.“With this kind of system, we can tweak the coverage on a [per-octave] basis, not just broadband,” says May. “That enabled us to avoid hot spots when beams overlap. It’s a good solution for this type of situation.”Houses of worship have always been unique environments for audio, but when you look closely it’s apparent that there is a lot of nuance [between] them. Fortunately, the hardware, software and acoustical tools for sound system design have only been getting better.
[Editor's note: This piece was originally publishes in June 2016.]
