Trinity-by-the-Cove Episcopal Church is a picturesque house of worship in Naples, Florida. Maintaining the architectural design of Palm Beach architect Howard Major, the church recently renovated its sound installation, including making a substantial upgrade to the reinforcement system in its sanctuary. At the heart of this system is Aspen Series signal processing from Lectrosonics.
Kirkegaard Associates (KA) was contracted to evaluate and, provide recommendations for A/V and acoustic improvement at the church with, Senior Consultant Jonathan Darling serving as both A/V system designer and project manager. John Fenstermaker, Director of Music at Trinity-by-the-Cove, worked closely with Darling on the upgrade, and Chris Burney of Scientific Sound handled the installation.
‘Trinity-by-the-Cove is an absolutely beautiful structure,’ Darling reports. ‘The church is subtly cruciform in design with small transepts on either side of the nave seating. Sevices use the wonderful organ and feature a fine small choir. We chose the Aspen SPN1612 processor because of Lectrosonics’ reputation for sound quality, its ability to handle all system connections in one DSP unit, its input capability, and because of its ability to be controlled via an Apple iPad.
‘The Lectrosonics Aspen was our first choice because of dependability,’ says Scientific Sound’s Chris Burney. ‘We have been using Lectrosonics for many years and they are always our go-to processing system for automatic mixers. The open-ended architecture, processing, and audio quality the unit provides is wonderful. We had used the Aspen processors in previous installs – controlling them with IR/serial touch panels in much of the same way as we did at Trinity-by-the- Cove. When it came time for the Trinity-by-the- Cove project, we were delighted that Lectrosonics had developed the ability to use iPads as controllers.’
‘The ability to provide direct iPad control of the processor was a feature that was of particular importance,’ Darling adds. ‘This feature enabled us to remove a third-party control system with a significant reduction of project cost for control equipment and programming. There are actually two iPad controllers in the system – one portable and one wall-mounted in the sacristy. This dual-control feature was actually custom programmed by Lectrosonics, which they were very helpful in providing.’
The Aspen SPN1612 audio processor features 16 inputs and 12 outputs in a 2U-high chassis. With ultra-low noise input preamps, a 48-output matrix and TCP/IP Ethernet addressability, this processor is able to provide auto-mixing and integration with echo cancellation and analogue mixing consoles.
‘I had a very positive experience with Lectrosonics’ technical support services,’ Darling says. ‘The company’s willingness to provide programming that would keep the two iPads synchronised, which was not originally provided by the product, proved integral to the success of this project.’
The Trinity-by-the-Cove project was completed in January 2014 and, since that time, Darling reports the new sound system and the performance of the Lectrosonics Aspen processor have been well received. ‘Everyone was extremely pleased with the functionality, convenience, and sound quality of the Aspen processor,’ he says. ‘The speech intelligibility in the church was significantly enhanced by a competitively priced renovation that was aided by the quality and cost savings provided by the Aspen processor using the iPad control option. The new system has been a win-win for all involved.’
‘With the success of the Trinity-by-the-Cove dual IPad control project in the books, our designer Kurtis August has designed and is installing another system – this one with two Aspen SPN2412s and dual iPad control for the local government boardroom. It’s an exceptional processor,’ Burney adds.
