Built in the early 20th century, the 250-capacity sanctuary at St Joseph Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, continues to serve as a cornerstone of the area’s social life. As an outdated sound reinforcement system made services difficult to understand, local A/V integration firm, Sound Connections Group, made good with the installation of a single Danley SM96 loudspeaker.
The stained glass windows, smooth white walls and ornate font, give the church a lively acoustic but the turnaround was so complete that it earned Sound Connections Group founder and owner Duane David a hug from St Joseph’s priest and accolades from its parishioners at the conclusion of the first service with the Danley in place.
‘The church had a handful of old loudspeakers in place that were blasting the room and walls with sound and adding chaos to the already poor acoustics,’ David explains. ‘To make matters far worse, the church’s priest, Father Antony, is a native of India; his accent made the sound reinforcement system’s intelligibility problem far more consequential. Trying to understand him was nearly impossible.
‘The church had already removed most of the low end by the time I was called in, which was a good move considering the situation. I was able to make a few more adjustments to make the system usable, but they really needed new loudspeakers using a fundamentally different approach. We arranged a demo.’
David brought two distinct Danley Sound Labs models for the demo – a SBH20LF column loudspeaker and an SM60 loudspeaker. ‘Danley’s coverage patterns are perfectly even and tight, which is critical in this case to keep energy off the walls,’ David says. ‘Related to that, they sound the same whether they are ten feet away from you or 50 feet away. They never have that “far-away” sound.
‘I didn’t have to do much tuning,’ he adds. ‘I set the crossover and did a couple of little subtractions around 500Hz to deal with room modes and that was it.’
David researched available models with different coverage patterns to select one that matched the shape and size of sanctuary. In the end, a single SM96 flown above the apse covers the entire room with very little energy hitting the walls or extending down to the stage, minimising feedback problems. David ordered the SM96 with Danley’s colour-matching programme, making it practically invisible.
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