With origins dating back 500 years, the Church of St John the Baptist in the Indian city of Thane, north of Mumbai, recently completed a massive restoration. The 18-month project saw the Portuguese style Christian church receive a complete sound system upgrade.

The church’s old system used multiple speakers spaced along its wall, but provided neither suitable intelligibility nor coverage. With an extension to the church (enabling the congregation to grow to around 5,000 for Sunday mass), the parish priest invited a demonstration of a replacement system. ‘We were not very impressed with the sound,’ reports Cleo Pereira from Martin Audio partner, Zoodio – not the company responsible for the demo.

Zoodio has been specifying the British brand for the past decade: ‘Instead, we suggested the Martin Audio O-Line as a brand, since we use it in most of our installs,’ Pereira says.

Zoodio’s Dylan Hilton – one of the church parishioners – co-ordinated the project after arranging a demonstration of the micro line array through Martin Audio distributor Integrated Entertainment Solutions (IES). ‘We suggested that this would do the trick, at the same time reducing the number of speakers required and enhancing the overall worship experience.’

O-Line was duly adopted, with Zoodio supplying the components and a team of engineers, technicians and riggers for the installation of four sets of O-Line (eight elements per side) to Hilton’s specification. O-Line was supported with Martin Audio’s CDD8 Differential Dispersion loudspeakers for the delays as well as in the corridors.

‘The reason was that we had a lot of constraints from the Heritage committee,’ Pereira says. ‘They wanted an extremely compact system that would not block any of the murals and paintings present in the church and also a system that sounded good.’

The first time both the O-Line and CDDs have been used in India, the greatest challenge was rigging the O-Line, as the walls of the church were not concrete but limestone. ‘The O-Line did a perfect job in reducing the reverberation within the church as the limestone walls had no acoustical properties.’

Feeding the system is a combination of six vocal mics for the choir, an acoustic guitar and keyboards, a podium mic for the clergy and three mics on the altar.

‘Having dealt with all the sound challenges, and taken proper care to avoid any further issues, Zoodio has brought back the voice of the church once more,’ Pereira concludes.