Central to the Southwestern Virginia campus of Emory & Henry College is the Memorial Chapel, a 500-seat building that has served thousands of worship services, hundreds of weddings and funerals, as well as other events in the lives of students and alumni of the college. Its most recent ‘special occasion’ was the installation of a new Danley Sound Labs point source sound reinforcement system.

‘The previous installation used ceiling loudspeakers that were installed 35-to-40ft in the air,’ saus Justin Plaster of JMP Productions. ‘This design required the speakers to be quite loud to drive sound to event and worship service attendees. With the reverberant nature of the chapel and the height and arch of the ceiling, this made intelligibility of the audio very poor. The system was also quite dated.’

In addition to the need for a new sound system, the chapel’s historic nature also posed an additional challenge: ‘Any time you’re working to improve sound in a historic location, there are challenges,’ says Danley Sound Labs Regional Sales Manager, Jay Andrews. ‘The installation required that there could be no alteration or structural change to the room. This meant that each speaker needed to blend into its surroundings so they felt invisible.’

To meet the installation requirements of the college – which was founded in 1836, and ranks among the best private liberal arts institutions in the US – Danley Sound Labs was able to match the paint colour throughout the room to allow the loud speakers to blend in with their surroundings.

By using Danley loudspeakers and amplifiers, JMP Productions could increase the intelligible voice lift as well as the ability to carry live and recorded acoustic music. The new installation featured SBH20 loudspeakers as the primary source of sound, along with Cube and Nano speakers for mid-delay and rear-delay fill loudspeakers, respectively. The system is powered by DNA 10K4 Pro amplifiers.

‘By using the Cube and Nano loudspeakers, we were able to keep all points of sound near those in attendance,’ Plaster says. ‘Installing the speakers lower in the room rather than in the ceiling, we could prevent sound reflection in the upper ceiling of the chapel and improve sound quality.’

‘The sound in Memorial Chapel is much improved as compared to just a few months ago,’ agrees Mark Graham, VP of Administration and General Counsel of Emory & Henry College. ‘Students, alumni and church members have all commented on the sound and vocal clarity throughout the chapel.’