Some 43 years into its existence, system integrator Irish distributor Rea Sound continues to specify permanent Martin Audio solutions in a variety of facilities – most notably Houses of Worship. Three recent instances demonstrate how the company adapts its approach to suit the various needs of each installation and protect their respective buildings.
‘We’d had our audio system since around 2017-2018,’ says Mike Johnson of St Finnian’s Church of Ireland in Castlereagh, outside Belfast. ‘But with Covid came a necessity to stream services, and the rector asked me to put together a package. So I spoke to Rea Sound and we had a system installed five or six weeks later.’
Rea Sound director Roger McMullan remembers that the church wanted a discreet sound system, with the loudspeakers set quite high. ‘That would give us a nice overview of sound coming from both the front and above, which would also tie in with the audio visual system,’ he says.
It was also one of the first churches in which Rea Sound had installed Martin Audio’s CDD series. ‘We used four CDD10s at the front of the church,’ McMullan says. ‘This gave us a nice even coverage of the spoken word throughout. It’s not a particularly long church, and the sound quality produced from CDD10 is exceptional.’
‘Working with Rea Sound has been excellent,’ Johnston reports. ‘We’re always to ring up and get answers to questions. The technical help and solutions are always good, and when we have problems they are always there to help.’
Another prominent Rea Sound installation was carried out at St Mark’s Church of Ireland, a Grade A listed parish church in Dundela. ‘We looked at a number of suppliers and asked them all to come in and look at the building and the acoustic, and make recommendations as to what would fit the bill,’ says the church’s Michael Newman.
Rea Sound was the successful bidder, specifying the O-Line micro-array. ‘With a traditional system you think of speakers placed around the building but that wasn’t the case. We were somewhat dubious about it at first but [Rea’s] faith has definitely been fulfilled. The sound quality is excellent.’
‘We set four hangs of 12 O-Line, two in the centre and one at each side,’ recalls McMullan.’ There are also CDD5 fill for the choir and CDD5 fill for the room. It’s a beautiful listed building so we not only have to be sensitive of the aesthetics, but also the acoustics, which are exceptional. The church didn’t want a distributed speaker system so O-Line fitted perfectly.
‘We were able to fit four hangs at the front of the church above the eye-line and as that’s in stone colour it worked well with the church, while providing exceptional sound quality from front to back.’
At Ballynure Methodist Church the A/V systems installed had over the years had varied in quality, and some were fairly primitive, according to the church’s Robert Stokes. ‘But Rea Sound have kept things moving along, as we had three churches installing at the same time.’
According to McMullan, ‘Each church was very different but the brief was the same. The control aspect had to be similar in all three churches. The sound system is based on Martin Audio CDD10 at high level again, which takes them away from the congregation’s eyesight and provides even coverage of sound throughout the whole space. Since all three churches are limited in terms of technical support, they rely on volunteers to easily position themselves in any church.’