Known as the architectural capital of America’s Midwest, the Columbus district of Indiana counts the ‘architectural masterpiece’ of St Peter’s Lutheran Church among its iconic buildings. But for all its aesthetic beauty, delivering evenly distributed sound through the sanctuary to its 750 congregants had proved historically difficult before the recent installation of a Martin Audio line array.
Constructed in 1988, the church had previously been through several PA iterations, starting with a point source system. ‘This was then replaced by a column array when they were doing mostly speech and voice lift, and then a planar system,’ says Alex Moon, Director of Engineering at locally company Force Tech. ‘But the PA never provided adequate coverage – particularly when the church’s needs developed from traditional choir-based service to a more contemporary Sunday worship, incorporating a full orchestra and band; at the same time it needed to meet the midweek needs of the private school to which it is attached.
Charged with devising a suitable and sustainable upgrade, Moon undertook a site survey. He noted the asymmetric and non-aligned interior, with the sanctuary set around a central section flanked by two raked seating wings and congregants seated in a series of rising levels of concentric, but irregular circles. He recognised that finding the centre of the room with the PA would be difficult. ‘It was a very interesting but difficult space, which required a complete rethink,’ he says.
The upgrade contract had originated from an acoustics consultant with whom Force Tech had worked previously. Sensing that the acoustic treatment required to preserve the integrity of the sound would be cost-prohibitive, Moon drew on his experience of specifying Martin Audio systems over a number of years, and his knowledge of the manufacturer’s Display3 acoustic prediction software.
The solution lay in Martin Audio’s scalable Wavefront Precision Mini (WPM) line array, which offered to be both cost-effective and obviate the need for acoustic treatment. The Display data confirmed that two hangs of ten elements each side of the stage with a pair of SXCF115 subwoofers at the top of each hang in end-fire would meet all requirements.
But prior to adoption, he insisted on delivering proof of concept to the client after their rocky SR journey to date: ‘We knew we could get them to a better place without all the acoustic treatment,’ he says.
Martin Audio’s Northeastern Regional Sales Manager, Martha Callaghan, organised a demo rig, and support engineer Will Harris set up and tuned the system on site. That was all that was required. ‘The difference was night and day,’ Moon says.
To complete the deployment, a pair of SX218 subs have been groundstacked either side of the stage and the entire rig is powered by an iK42 and three iKon iK81 DSP multichannel amplifiers, assigned in two-box resolution. Mindful that the church is a space of architectural beauty, Moon had loudspeakers finished in white to blend into the décor. ‘We had warned the client from the beginning that [the PA] would be a lot more visible than previously, and they were fine with that.’
When came to tuning and the precise steering the system, Hard Avoid was used to steer sound away from relevant areas, while the cardioid subs ensured the necessary rear rejection, enabling consistent coverage without unwanted reflections.
Having designed and commissioned the system Moon, along with colleagues, account manager Brian Eicher and project manager Darren Strom, are confident that this will meet St Peter’s needs for the foreseeable future.
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