Suffering from poor speech intelligibility and coverage, and recurring feedback with its old sound installation, the Church of St John the Evangelist in Frederick, Maryland, has found a new lease of life with a Community EntaSys column line-source loudspeaker system.

A Grecian ionic design with a cruciform floor plan, the church has carpeted floors but its spacious marble and plaster interior and hardwood pews create major challenges for voice intelligibility. Through a live demonstration that showed his design could provide intelligible sound with even coverage while minimising audio feedback, Eric Johnson of Audio Video Group convinced St John’s that a new set-up would solve its sound problems.

Now installed, the new system has an EntaSys ENT-FR full-range column and an ENT-LF low-frequency column on each side of the chancel tilted slightly downwards to avoid rear-wall echoes. The left and right transepts and the rear of the church are covered by Ent206s. A pair of ENT203s provides coverage for the balcony and choir loft.

Johnson used an Earthworks gooseneck mic on the ambo and lectern and provided Shure wireless mics for the priests. St. John’s system uses a Biamp AudiaFlex for automatic mixing, loudspeaker delay and system equalisation and Lab.gruppen power amplifiers. A small mixer in the balcony blends choir soloists and guitars into the service.

A measure of the new system’s intelligibility and coverage was quickly offered by a senior gentleman attending mass, who reported that this was the first time in a long time that he could clearly hear what was being said.