Ashington Church in Pulborough, a large village and civil parish in the Horsham district of West Sussex, has been events ranging from prayer evenings to live band concerts in its efforts to keep its congregation’s spirits high through the uncertainty of the pandemic lockdown and beyond.
Renovated around ten years ago, the needs of the church have grown to embrace both live and online services, leaving loudspeakers in ceiling beams inadequate, giving ‘dead zones’ and delay issues.
After installing several systems on a temporary basis, Simon Barrett, sound engineer and consultant decided that he needed something permanent. ‘While it did mean we had a better signal to noise ratio, those speakers just couldn’t reproduce the sound we wanted,’ he explains. ‘I even had to bring in a sub from time to time just to balance everything out.
Flipside Soundsystem was chosen to manage the sound upgrade, taking into account the narrow dispersion requirements – a TW Audio speaker installation that includes two T20is, two QBT20s, a B30i, a C5 and an M8i – to accompany an Allen & Heath SQ-6 mixing desk.
‘It’s a friendly layout for a church,’ says Flipside MD, James Cooper. ‘It’s not a particularly reverberant room and, with the audience capacity being around 300, you don’t need anything massive to fill up that type of space.’
A truss strapped to the spanning oak beam was also installed, providing a slick look to the aesthetic as well as an ease of installation for the T20 speakers. ‘That method of fixing was great as we left no permanent damage to the building,’ Cooper says. ‘It gave us a nice, safe and secure mounting of the T20s, and has ultimately given us structure for any future installations they might want to add. Simon has already mounted a couple of paddles and shotgun mics for recording, which give it a nice bit of infrastructure to work with.’
For amplification, Flipside installed Powersoft Quarrto and Duecanali platforms that Barrett modified with a remote on/off switch for use during live performances. ‘I’m really looking forward to listening to a full band on this system, as it’s great to have a set-up that I know will work and that I can adjust if I need to,’ he says. ‘I’ve been learning how to use the PowerSoft system and I’m already enjoying the flexibility, so I can adjust things like the tops to sub-ratio, in terms of level, if and when I need to.’
As well as approving the overall sound quality, Barrett appreciated Flipside’s hands-on approach to the installation process. ‘The team said they would come and do an audio demo of the system, free of charge, which wasn’t part of our original agreement, so I really liked that extra level of support. They also ran some extra cables for me such as a DMX as well as a couple of mic and Ethernet, cables and terminated the wireless ones. That certainly helped the process.’
The result has seen positive feedback from the church congregation and visitors. ‘It’s such a smooth sounding system that is practically invisible and so all the comments have been really encouraging,’ Barrett concludes. ‘The vicar has said it is a system worthy of his new acoustic guitar…’
