St Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception has served as the center of the Archdiocese of Portland, in Oregon, since the site’s dedication in 1926. The cathedral is designed in the Romanesque style with Byzantine elements that include stained-glass windows, an apse dome, and a three-storey-high ceiling. Many original and historic components of the church remain intact, whose preservation is during any renovation is critical.

With intelligibility of the spoken word providing an enduring challenge to services, the cathedral needed an upgrade to its audio system. Central to its design is a Dante network that supports 21 Nexo and 5 Yamaha loudspeakers, including 12 Geo M6 line array modules for the Nave (in custom gold and cream paint), four Nexo NXAMP4x1 MkII processor/amplifiers, a Nexo DTD processor/amplifier system, Yamaha MRX7-D processor, two Yamaha RIO1608-D2 Dante I/O units, and 23 DPA microphones and two Shure ULX-D4Q wireless mic systems.

‘One of the main things that Dante does for us is it allows us to simplify the wiring,’ says Devin Sheets, Lead Design & Installation Technician at Alpha Sound, the firm that designed and installed the new audio system. ‘Dante allows the installation to go smoother because this is a space where the cabling is not standard. It’s not like a new build where you have the flexibility to install during construction. It’s not like a building where the wiring was done to industry standards and based on modern equipment.

‘In this space we have to keep it simple, and the rule is if you can get a Cat5 cable there, you’re good. You plug it in, and you have full access to the entire architecture.’

The Alpha Sound team was able to access panels behind the ceiling and within the walls behind the choir organ to establish a 1GB infrastructure for the Dante network. From there, the team installed a robust workflow of Dante-capable endpoints.

Alpha Sound founder, Duane Sheets says that using Dante in a house of worship also brings a level of elegance in terms of control and management for on-site staff. For example, teaching Dante Controller software – which allows point-and-click management of the system – takes only an hour of training. ‘That’s been our experience,’ he confirms. ‘We are able to train people on site at the other churches we’ve worked with in a fairly minimal amount of time to feel comfortable working on the Dante system.’

Sheets said the church saw the difference in the system immediately: ‘When we first used the system from the first Sunday… the thing we heard people saying, which is actually quite common on jobs that we do in this regard, is that for the first time people could really understand what was being said,’ he says.

The leadership of the church agrees, saying everything from the live sound to the streaming offerings now sound better. ‘We’ve got a state-of-the-art system that everybody is really quite pleased with,’ says Msgr Gerard O’Connor, the cathedral’s Rector. ‘People say to me “you really sing well”, but I don’t – I’m actually a very average singer. But when I do sing mass, it sounds really good, so I’m happy with it.’