Queen of Angels Catholic church in Riverside, Calif., recently accomplished completion of a brand new 1,600-seat church facility. The project represents the fruits of fundraising work done by the congregation over the past decade that included bake sales, fiestas, galas, raffles, and even priests running marathons.
The new sanctuary presented some acoustical challenges for AV systems integrator Sunset Audio Visual of Upland, Calif., --challenges handled well by the capabilities of a Bose Professional RoomMatch DeltaQ system, according to those involved.
The initial challenge faced was the church’s election to use tile flooring rather than carpet in the sanctuary to minimize maintenance. “Tile sends the sound all over the place,” explains Stan Kojder, president of Sunset. He consulted with Bose engineers, who plugged the sanctuary’s dimensions into Bose Modeler software and developed a five-array design to direct the energy at the pews and minimize floor and wall reflections.
“We’ve been a big supporter of Bose for a long time,” says Kojder, who oversaw the engineering and installation of the new audio and video systems at Queen of Angels.
“The precision of their sound and the way they engineer is second to none.”
Although the sanctuary is essentially square it echoes traditional church design with a vaulted nave and a crosswise transept. An early system design called for the arrays to be flown within the nave, but Kojder recommended that the two left and two right arrays be hung from the lower ceiling to either side. “We were able to put them in a place that is aesthetically pleasing and still achieve the same result, which was ample coverage of the entire church,” he explains.
Eleven RoomMatch modules compose the system, selected from the line’s 42 different combinations of horizontal and vertical dispersion patterns (which include asymmetrical configurations). The central RoomMatch cluster, above the chancel, comprises three modules that cover a central seating area and two rear, fan-shaped sections. Two arrays firing 90 degrees to left and right cover transept seating. A forward pair of arrays is aimed toward the rear corners of the sanctuary and covers the largest swath of main seating. The entire system, driven by three Bose PowerMatch PM8500N networked amplifiers, generates a full-range SPL of over 109 dB averaged across the floor area.
“I was told that a sound system would never work in our church as designed without carpet or the use of other sound baffles,” says Mark Jaramillo, head of the parish's building committee. “But with the use of Bose speakers, custom-tuned to our building, our sound is amazing, and we made no modifications to accommodate it – it accommodated us.”
