As principal design consultant at Dickensheets Design Associates, Ken Dickensheets places a high value on finding the right solution for any application – whether for public buildings, educational facilities, corporate applications, theatres, or a house of worship install. This extends beyond designing immediate solutions to meeting their long-term needs.

That was particularly important with a recent cathedral installation in Austin, Texas.

When the existing system at Austin’s Saint Mary Cathedral was no longer deemed adequate, 
Dickensheets brought his 40 years in pro audio into play – 35 of them spent on the Austin audio scene. ‘Let me give you a brief history,’ he begins. ‘Saint Mary is a very old cathedral and the seat of the Austin diocese. In 2004 we worked with them during a restoration of the cathedral and, at that time, put in several “Brand X” line arrays.’

While the products worked reasonably well at the time, over the years they became increasingly unreliable. Dickensheets’ response was as concise: ‘I said “let’s just replace the line arrays with something that’s quality, that works”. We arranged to have a couple of Tannoy’s QFlex 24s brought in for them to try, demoed them in the church and they wouldn’t give them back.’

The cathedral’s origins date back to the mid-1800s, to a small stone church named St. Patrick’s. Although the church was renamed St. Mary’s in 1866, it wasn’t until six years later, after the railway arrived and Austin became the permanent state capital, that the parish decided to construct a larger facility to serve the city’s growing population.
 In its own way, the beauty of the design of the cathedral reflects the culture of the city and the landscape it inhabits. ‘It’s a gorgeous room with a very Central Texas motif,’ Dickensheets says. ‘It’s pretty spectacular.’

Early on, Saint Mary Cathedral was a part of the diocese of Galveston and still designated as a church, the first commission designed by Nicholas Clayton, who would later become one of Texas’ foremost Victorian architects. In 1948, when the diocese of Austin was created, a comprehensive update of the church was undertaken, many of the neo-gothic decorations replaced, and the church was re-designated a cathedral.

The cathedral now occupies a location one block north of the original site of St. Patrick’s and is the heart of a diocese made up of 125 parish churches/communities, and in excess of 450,000 parishioners.

Divine design

Saint Mary’s design uses natural settings – tree-like columns, murals covered in a tracery of vines and leaves and a soaring dome dotted with stars to reflect the heavens. Over time, other details have been included to speak specifically to the cathedral’s place as the heart of a diocese in the heart of Texas – most notably in the case of the cathedral’s baldacchino, which is decorated with cacti and bluebonnets.

According to his company’s desire to deliver solutions that are ‘loud and clear’, when revisiting the system Dickensheets wanted to provide a fix that was sonically superior to the pre-existing loudspeakers, but without adversely impacting the cathedral’s unique atmosphere and décor. ‘Aesthetically, they had to blend into the church,’ he says. ‘The QFlex are actually adjacent to some architectural columns so they don’t look out of place at all; they’re very unobtrusive.’

In fact, the Qflex cabinets pretty much disappear against the cathedral architecture – until the are called into use: ‘Empirically, it was agreed by everyone involved in the project that the QFlex actually delivered higher speech intelligibility and a more natural sound than the more expensive arrays that they replaced,’ Dickensheets reports.

Tracy Frederick, technician and project manager for Austin Audio and Video, the installers on the project, agrees. ‘They demoed the QFlex and they never came out again. It was definitely an improvement.’

Like Dickensheets, Frederick is a long time resident of Austin, who first moved to the city from Louisiana to be a part of Austin’s burgeoning music scene and has worked at Saint Mary, and with Dickensheets, previously.

‘On this last review of the system, all we did was to replace the arrays,’ Dickensheets says. 'We used the same design concept.’

Some pre-existing system elements were reused, including an Ivie 884 Auto-mixer, Shure P-4800 DSP, several Audio-Technica wireless microphones and QSC CX Series amplifiers to drive both the existing subs and a number of 70V loudspeakers previously installed in the narthex, cry room and outdoors for Easter processionals.

‘There’s no console,’ Dickensheets says. ‘Speech is done using the automated mixer alone and when they need music they have a small remote controller that plugs in and turns that into a manual mixer.’ In all, there are eight mic inputs, including four channels of wireless for use when necessary. Choir reinforcement, when needed, is handled with a separate system from the rear loft to maintain source illusion.

‘One of the things our cathedral is known for is our Schola Cantorum, a choir made up of 20-to-25 professional musicians,’ says Ana-Cristina Gonzalez, Saint Mary Cathedral’s director of stewardship and development. ‘It’s traditional choral music, but every year we also have a very popular Celtic Christmas concert. We have two performances right before Christmas and they always sell out, and there are always events – last year we did Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and during high holidays, we bring instrumentalists in; harps, flutes and violins. There’s a lot of music. Our Rector, Father Albert Laforet, and our director of music, Dr Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, always want to ensure the liturgy is complete with beautiful music that goes along with our beautiful cathedral.’

‘Most Catholic churches are highly reverberant and this is no exception,’ Frederick adds. ‘It has vaulted ceilings that are 40-to-50 feet high, stucco walls, beautiful stained glass and natural wood. And it’s still very intelligible, no problems at all.’

‘We had to be able to provide high-quality, even coverage to the main floor, but also to a high choir loft at the rear of the church,’ says Dickensheets. While that didn’t require massive SPL, it’s still a challenge in a 400-capacity, two-storey space with an RT in excess of 4s and no acoustic treatment to speak of.

‘The two QFlex 24s are placed to the left and right of the chancel, facing the front of the sanctuary straight on and mounted approximately eight feet off the floor. While that does put some of the mics in the line of fire,’ Dickensheets says. ‘Whether someone is walking amongst the congregation using a wireless microphone, or using the pulpit/podium mic – which is literally in front of the QFlex – There is no feedback.’

The ability to target specific areas using QFlex intuitive BeamEngine GUI was of high value to the project, specifically in terms of keeping the sound off of the rear wall, while still providing ample coverage for the main sanctuary and choir loft. The most difficult portion of the install, from Frederick’s perspective, was installing the brackets for the arrays; not because of the hardware provided to do so, he emphasises, but because of the construction of the walls themselves. ‘They’re stucco, but with natural limestone behind them, and they’re over 120 years old, but once the brackets were installed the speakers went up easily.’

In terms of both overall intelligibility and the provision of a more natural sound, the QFlex system has improved the worship experience of the congregation substantially: ‘Our parishioners are from families that founded the cathedral,’ Gonzalez says. ‘We have a wide range of ages and if they can’t hear, they definitely let us know.’

‘I was there when, if you sat in the middle of the cathedral, you could not hear anything clearly,’ she adds, ‘Now, you can sit anywhere and hear everything very clearly. I’m also a Lector, and when the new main loudspeakers were installed, they asked the Lectors to come in and test them. It’s 100 per cent better. That’s not a bad recommendation.’

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