One of two minor basilicas in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn in New York, the Basilica of Regina Pacis is a historic house-of-worship with all the hallmarks of cathedral-style architecture – a long, narrow nave crossed by a narrow transept and lined with marble columns bearing an arched ceiling. Religious murals it above intricate stained glass windows in alcoves above the columns on each side, drawing attention to a raised apse beyond the transept.

Its architecture, interior and ornamentation have made it a destination for worshippers and a local landmark, but its reverberant space presents challenges to today’s house-of-worship integrators. So, when it came time for Monte Bros to upgrade to the sound system it has installed in 2002, Steve Minozzi designed a system using three Powersoft Quattrocanali 1204 amplifier platforms to power 12 independent zones.

‘Acoustically, it’s extremely difficult to design a sound system for a church like the Basilica of Regina Pacis,’ Minozzi says. ‘It’s a long space with a lot of hard surfaces, a concave ceiling and a concave sanctuary – that breaks every acoustic rule in the book. But, we have to make the sound system work for space, and it has to work automatically so, when it comes to amplification in these kinds of basilicas, we need a heavy lifter. And the Powersoft Quattrocanali 1204 is a heavy lifter.’

The Quattrocanali platforms employed in the latest Basilica of Regina Pacis system use Powersoft Smart Rails Management technology, which implements real-time voltage tracking in the power supply to minimise the differences between the output voltage and rails voltage, improving overall efficiency and reducing heat dissipation.

‘In 2002, the amplifiers and DSP processors we installed were the top of the line – but that was almost 18 years ago,’ Minozzi says. ‘The Quattrocanali has more horsepower and a very low rate of failure. That’s a primary concern for a contractor: dependability.

‘Heat dispersion is another problem in big installs like this, because they need a lot of amplifiers,’ he continues. ‘That was a further reason we upgraded the system using the Quattrocanali 1204.’

Building on Monte Bros decades-long relationship with the Basilica of Regina Pacis – starting with a sound system installation in 1989, which was later updated to include DSP processors in 2002 – the most recent upgrade to the church’s sound system includes two rows of custom-built loudspeakers designed to blend in with the marble columns on each side of the nave, and more than 5,000ft of cabling.

‘Inside the church, it’s a beautiful space, and when you put in a new sound system, you obviously don’t want to desecrate the appearance in any way,’ Minozzi says. ‘So, when the speaker installation was completed, we had custom grille cloths made to match the marble columns.

‘Thirty years ago, if you took a powerful amplifier and connected it to speakers without first plugging it into a mixer to control the levels, you would fry the speakers. They would go up in a puff of smoke. So, one of the other important features of the Quattrocanali 1204 is that it senses changes in ohmage because the amplifiers have to deal with changes due to capacitance and other anomalies. Since each bank of speakers is on its own Quattrocanali channel, if one loudspeaker goes bad, the amp will automatically sense the change and readjust.’