The late 19th century Grade II-listed St Stephen’s church in Birmingham (UK) recently completed a multimillion pound redevelopment of its structure and facilities, including addressing long-standing acoustic challenges.
With large open spaces, hard walls and high ceilings it was difficult to amplify speech effectively in order for the spoken elements of services to be crystal clear. And, as is frequently the case in churches, this needed to be achieved without impacting on sightlines or the appearance of the building.
It was d&b audiotechnik installation partner, Southby Productions that recommended a sound reinforcement solution from d&b. ‘I was aware that d&b loudspeaker technology was being used at high profile Christian events in the UK where the system design and installation was coordinated by Southby Productions,’ says Andy Walker, from St Stephen’s.
‘We had been advised that the quality of speech and music reinforcement was excellent and I hoped that we would be able to achieve similar results in our building.’
The brief was for an audio system that would vastly improve speech intelligibility but could also be mounted out of the congregation’s line of sight. The solution proposed by Southby Productions was based around the 24C column loudspeakers from the d&b xC-Series. The 24Cs house six 4-inch low/mid drivers along with a HF array comprising of six 1.1-inch soft-dome tweeters. While all column loudspeakers exhibit pattern control in the vertical plane, the xC-Series feature a passive cardioid set-up providing 18dB broadband attenuation towards the rear, greatly reducing reflections and increasing gain before feedback when working with open microphones.
‘Because the xC-Series combine directionality and pattern control based on passive cardioid technology, we have been able to keep reflected sound to an absolute minimum in St Stephen’s reverberant building,’ says Southby Productions Director, Chris Jones. ‘The d&b system has significantly increased the clarity of spoken parts of the service, which is excellent news for church leaders and for the congregation who don’t miss a single word. When combined with a 27S subwoofer, the system has the necessary headroom for contemporary worship reinforcement.’
With clarity of speech in hand, St Stephen’s also had to comply with the strict Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches (DAC) guidelines for sound installations in church buildings. To ensure the cabinets would aesthetically integrate with the gothic-style interior, the slender columns were mounted high up on the walls. To reduce the excitation of the reverberant field even further, the entire HF array was mechanically adjusted to target the audience listening area exactly. ‘It’s normally very hard to meet DAC requirements for church installations,’ says Jones. ‘However, with the discreet xC-Series we were able to tick all the boxes and ensure that the architects and congregation were equally accommodated.’
In all, the installation used xC-Series 24C cardioid column loudspeakers as the main LR system with xC-Series 16C cardioid column loudspeakers installed on support beams as delay loudspeakers. These were supplemented by an xS-Series 27S-Sub subwoofer. All of these, and additional xS-Series 5S loudspeakers, are driven by installation specific 10D amplifiers. The system tuning was achieved using ArrayCalc simulation software and R1 Remote control software.
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