Installation - Stevanage Case Study

The Coptic Church Sound Installation

We were approached by this church asking if we could go and have a look at installing a PA system in their new building.

The main church features 2 main halls and several remote rooms.

One of the main criteria was that the PA was to be as discreet as possible.  We managed this some people even thought they had forgotten to put one in as its so well hidden.

The Main Hall

In the main hall there is space to seat at least 600 people. Above is a picture of the hall on the day of the opening.

In this room there is a total of 11 speakers!! This gives an extremely even sound coverage. Can you spot them?

Also installed in the church is 8 mics. 4 for the choir area reinforcement and 2 hidden in the chandelier over the altar, and 2 on the lectern.

3 of the speakers were hidden right up at the top of the ceiling where they are extremely discreet.

The back hall.

This hall is more multi purpose and can be used for all sorts from youth clubs and other special events or as a extension to the main church.  In this hall we used 12 compact speakers giving  again a very even sound coverage and works well both ways around due to the way the system works its hard to tell where the sound is coming from but still provides a clear sound with a good response.

During the opening the hall was used for after service food and the PA provided background music and announcements the following day a choir performed in the hall and the church were very pleased with the results.

Along with the two main halls we were requested to route the sound through to several remote rooms, baptistery, meeting rooms, kitchen, hall ways, corridors  parents and children’s room and other rooms each one having its own volume controls,  with the option to be able to route the sound from the front hall back hall or a individual mic in the main hall.

With the system we were requested that the system control was executed from a remote room with very simple controls  as they wanted very little interaction with it.

We installed a DSP (digital sound processor) that uses a touch screen to control it. This device is a networkable device meaning it can be updated or controlled across a broadband connection or network connection using software we provided.

The next picture shows the mixer page of our program offering basic level control and signal meters.  Behind the scenes running are many graphic equalizers (about 14 eq’s) compressors limiters (9) and feed back suppressors all within the one DSP.

The image below shows the routing. All the inputs 1 – 10 can be assigned to anyone of the 6 outputs just by touching the screen, multiple inputs can be routed to multiple outputs.

Some of the rooms were still unfinished at the opening and building work was still going on while we were installing the equipment. The following pictures shows some of the progress as we were working.

As you can imagine we had a lot of cables to run, here is one of our team working on the cabling!

Another one of our team on T break!

Here as you can see due to the deadlines the floor was still being laid as our workers were having to install the sound system. This shows another one of our guys getting ready to put the mics in while another guy is laying the marble floor!

At the opening of the centre, a wide range of prestigious guests gave their blessings:-

• His Grace The very Most Dr Rowan Williams, (the Arch Bishop of Canterbury)
• His Royal Highness The Duke Of Gloucester,
  (bearing a message from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
• His Grace Bishop Angaelos (General Bishop in the UK – Coptic Church)
• His Grace The Rt. Reverend Bishop Christopher Chessun,
  (bearing a message from HRH The Prince Of Wales)
• His Eminence Archbishop Gregorious of Thyayeria,
  (Armenian Orthodox primate of Great Britain)
• Councillor Simon Speller,
  (mayor of Stevenage)
• His Excellency Mr Gehad Madi,
  (Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt)
• Rev. Bill Snelson.
  (General Secretary of Churches Together in England).
• Mr Brian Pearce,
  (Director of the inter-faith network)

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