Occupying the same location since 1848, Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Bethlehem, Georgia, has looked to the future with each successive generation of congregants with each determining how best to minister to the community. Recently, improving the intelligibility of the church sound system came to the fore.
The church’s two 12-inch, two-way loudspeakers flown sideways in a vertical array with two small side fill loudspeakers to cover the front left and right seating areas gave acceptable on-axis intelligibility. However, this fell significantly in the remainder of the sanctuary. While incremental improvements could be made by removing low-mid energy from the system, the real solution proved to be a highly targeted installation using Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers.
Church staff called in William Collins, account executive at Georgia-based S&L Integrated, to devised a new audio solution that would eliminate intelligibility issues. S&L Integrated contacted independent manufacturer’s representative Richard Hembree of Griffith Sales Associates to assist with the design.
‘The main loudspeakers are located in the centre, which is usually the best location in a sanctuary,’ Collins says. ‘However, the sanctuary in Bethlehem UMC has a beautiful barrel shaped ceiling. Any sound generated from the centre of the room is magnified significantly by this feature. The result is a significant percentage of the sanctuary with poor intelligibility.’
A pair of Iconyx Compact ICC36/3 steerable arrays were chosen to address the challenging acoustics. The ICC36/3 brings the performance and directivity of Renkus-Heinz’ Iconyx Gen5 Series to spaces where the classic Iconyx arrays are too large. With a nearly 40 per cent smaller footprint, the slender cabinet of the ICC36/3 virtually disappeared into the background of the Bethlehem United Methodist Church nave once installed. Additionally, Renkus-Heinz’ latest beam steering advancements offer a movable acoustic centre, multiple beam opening angles and high-pass filtering of individual beams, all of which helped greatly improve the sanctuary’s sound.
Confronted by the new loudspeakers, most parishioners had trouble seeing the system that was now making the sermon and musical worship intelligible. ‘I thought those were just shadows,’ said one member after having the loudspeakers pointed out to them. Another, simply said ‘wow’ when someone spoke from the pulpit.
