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Installation Europe Magazine
August 2007
Keeping the Faith
People celebrating higher spiritual power with fervour and a need for exaltation are enlisting the work of audio/video integrators. Joy Zaccaria reports
One of the things that unites worshippers of all denominations is the need for high-quality reinforcement ofthe spoken word. What may be surprising is that installerswho would normally do nightclubs have been turning to churches lately as clients. Bigchurches need more elaborate AV systems comparable to a music performance venue, andthe volume of smaller churches throughout Europe that need a decent AV system is steadilyon the rise.
“The growing market tends to be thecharismatic, contemporary churches, which areworship-driven,” says John Ellis, sales consultant at Shuttlesound in Surrey, UK.“Sometimes they rent a school hall, sometimes it’s a converted industrial unit, and sometimesit’s a purpose-built building. They are looking for higher quality and a higher level of sound.This is now growing quite rapidly in the UK.”
DM Music in Hertfordshire, UK, has completed over 2,000 AV systems in UKchurches in its 15 years established. Dave Moore, MD and project manager at DM Music,says, “The church was in decline up until about two years ago, when the decline stopped.” Themain growth is in the Evangelical or Pentecostal churches in urban areas, especiallyin Germany and the UK. For these churches, there is a growing congregation of immigrantsfrom Nigeria and Ghana.
For the Roman Catholic churches, a large influx of Middle and Eastern European immigrants to the UK (with the opening ofborders within the EU) has fostered Roman Catholic church attendance growth in thecountry, according to Keith Watson, VP marketing and communications of TheSoundcraft Studer Group, Harman International Industries. “That’s a sustainablearea of growth,” he says.
With an eye on the future, churches have had success with bringing in a youthful element with more music. “Some churches more into youth groups are increasing because of the younger focus,” says David Dalzell, senior partner, along with his wife Myrtle at DL Electronics in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. In order to reinforce the music, they are installing more of the full range speakers, patch panels and mixing desks that are associated with music rather than DSP-controlled arrays.
Ellis sees houses of worship as a growth market. “The budgets seem to be going up,” he says. “Integration companies that would traditionally do nightclubs and theatres are asked by local churches to come and have a look.”
Ellis has noticed the uptick over the past two to three years in the 15-inch and larger cabinets. “There’s still a big market for the medium-sized cabinets,” he says. “There has certainly been an increase in the use of linearrays overall in the houses of worship market and particularly with praise and worship churches.”
Modern praise and worship requires good coverage across the auditorium. “It requires reasonably high SPL, which you can’t get out of a column speaker or out of a small 8-inch loudspeaker,” says Ellis. “Churches who are fairly serious about worship and would have a worship band with guitar, keyboards, drums and so on, realise they have to invest in a highquality sound system and high-quality projection so people can see the words.
“Also they realise that to get people into the churches and to keep them enthusiastic, you can’t give them a second-class sound system.”
As with any industry, it’s important to learn as much as possible from and about the customer. For integrators in the house of worship space, “folks are getting more familiar with the technology,” says Ted Leamy, vice president, Installed Sound, JBL Professional in California. “But how do you match the technology with what the end-users’ needs truly are? That’s the key.”
Leamy understands that it’s about the style of worship. Questions to ask when approaching a new house of worship project are: Do you do primarily speech reinforcement? Do you do speech and music? Do you do high-impact music? With speech involved also?
The process of learning about the customer involves presenting him with the options available. “We would normally do a demo and let them hear a digital array compared to what they have,” says Dalzell. “For a big project, they would have a shoot-out between a few different companies proposing different ideas.”
Education is key for an informed decision, but easy access to plenty of misguided information on the internet can make for confusion. “Sometimes the problem is they want to put a mixing desk in and they want to have control of it,” says Dalzell. “But they don’t always have the expertise.”
Often a client will have astrong idea of what he thinks would be great in the church based on what he’s seen in another venue. If a client has had no real experience with AV, it’s important to bring the discussion back to the basics. “Nothing hurts more than to walk into a worship space after something has been installed that either the church doesn’t need or no one knows how to operate,” says Leamy.
Simplicity and ease-of-use have become a main issue. Christer Lidberg of Septon Electronic AB in Bromma, Sweden, says, “Often church personnel don’t have any technical or general soundknowledge so they rely on a system to take care of itself with just one push of a button.”
In terms of standard gear, “the typical priorities are the system’s intelligibility but also microphone technology,” says Lidberg. “Wireless headset microphones are becoming a standard and the users pay lot of attention to the comfort and fit of the mic.”
Induction loop systems for the hard of hearing are also standard fare in houses of worship, especially since the advent of European disability discrimination legislation, enacted in the 1990s and recently heavily enforced. “Our loops business in 2005 went through the roof,” says Moore.
The spoken word is where the technology is paramount. Romano Cunsolo, Biamp Systems’ regional manager for south-east Europe, understands that “in 90% of the cases, houses of worship are looking for a good speech reinforcement system. Some are looking towards a real PA system because they tend to have praise and worship during their services.”
Also reinforcing the spoken word, projectors are used to display text and verses from scripture in addition to showing video. “Lately more and more churches are wanting projectors,” says Dalzell. “Also in the interest of aesthetics, they use electric or manually operated screens for PowerPoint presentations, the hymns or parts of the ceremony.”
The classic design of stone churches is part of European identity and maintaining their aesthetic is a high priority. “The acoustics can hence be quite difficult to marry with a PA system,” says Lidberg. The audience today expects a higher level of audio (and video) performance than before, but it has to be delivered without any obvious components.
In the UK, dealing with the many Grade I and Grade II listed buildings – where nothing is to be attached to the fabric – means getting written permission. “Even if they are allowed to drill holes in the pillars or in the walls, they have to try and hide the cables,” says Ellis. “They have to use minimum drilling and minimum force to get the equipment in place.”
Remote control systems are convenient for this market especially where the visual impact of a large console in a listed building would be catastrophic. “We are seeing a little success with remote control systems,” says Moore. “All the control can be put in the vestry or the choir loft and preset with a simple, small book-sized remote control in the pew. That’s ticking lots of boxes at the moment. It has security benefits, aesthetic benefits, and easeof- use benefits. It’s definitely a growing market.”
Compared to Europe, North America has a much bigger market for AV installations in houses of worship. There is a much higher proportion of the population attending church, therefore giving the church money. The average size of a church auditorium in the UK would be about 200-300.
According to James Shears, product manager at The Soundcraft Studer Group, Harman Pro Group UK, his company’s most expensive products get sold into American churches. “The US is one of our biggest markets. In the UK, there are one or two churches that might buy the top-end for £56,000 but they’re few and far between. Most of the mixers we sell in the church market in the UK are at the lower end, at around £7,000.”
The tender process varies for European churches. With traditional Church of England and established state churches, it’s all done by committee, which adds time and complications. “They will have a chain of command and a committee will present its findings to another committee until it gets to the top man,” says Moore. “The Catholic Church is fantastic because the priest is the committee and he just says yes or no.”
“It can be confusing,” says Ellis, “because even the larger church groups in the UK in the more Christian contemporary scene, such as New Frontiers or Grapevine, may have an association of 100 or 200 churches or fellowships in the UK. But there is no central buying policy. Every church determines its own budget and decides how to spend it.”
As they are conservative clients by nature, once a house of worship finds an AV company it trusts, it sticks with its choice. “It’s taken us a long time to get to know the decision makers,” says Moore. “For example, The Church of England is split into 20 or so areas. Each of these areas has one man who makes all the decisions about everything.”
In approaching new business, taking proactive steps to anticipate the clients’ needs goes a long way. “Integrators should definitely go and see some of their churches, get in contact with the responsible persons there, and explain to them how the ‘sound problem’ could be solved – including recording, video and so on,” says Cunsolo. “They should also include a training programme on how to use the system correctly after installation, maybe also offering a maintenance contract for several years, so the church can be sure that the system will work and pay back for at least five years.”
Sound considerations are similar in mosques and synagogues to Christian churches since the classic formula involves plenty of reverberant spaces with stone and glass.
“A mosque tends to be a huge environment,” says Ellis. “A modern-built mosque tends to be all glass with stone floors along with concrete or brick.” A problem particular to mosques for some installers has been that the music tends to be mostly singing with minimal drums and a stringed instrument, if anything. “This means a lot of pluck transients,” he says. “It resonates the building and the problem becomes vocal intelligibility.” However, since mosques don’t have worship bands, the requirements for more high sound pressure levels and for a large mixing desk are not so great.
The requirements of synagogues are more similar to the Christian churches. “They have some instruments and again some of their buildings are quite old so they have the same acoustic nightmare,” says Ellis, who adds that more contemporary synagogues have become quite popular and are buying equipment.
No matter what the denomination, they are looking for the technology to support the way they worship. “Every church member is looking for excellence,” says Leamy. “It sounds overly simplified, but they are looking for the audiovisual system that supports their worship needs.” In the case of synagogues and Greek Orthodox there is a lot of presentation chanting. The music-oriented Christian churches along with the Evangelical Christian churches are looking for highimpact music.
Since word of mouth and networking are so important in this market, training of church volunteers plays a big part. “We encourage training,” says Ellis. “Once you train someone, they move to another church and they know that not just any sound system will do – especially not the cheapest.”
Making it future-proof is also a priority. “In the UK, we like crisp clear sound quality. We like plenty of headroom. Sound systems tend to be over-spec’ed if they can afford it,” he says. “It’s better to give them a larger loudspeaker than a smaller one to give them the opportunity to grow.”
Case study: Church House Conference Centre unveils new look from Radia Pro and Kelsey
JUST OVER a year after Church House Conference Centre in Westminster closed its doors for major building work, the Grade II-listed landmark re-opened this spring to reveal a complete overhaul of the main Assembly Hall, the largest room in the house – aided by Radia Pro components and a Kelsey Acoustics cabling solution.
Owned by the Corporation of the Church House, and designed by renowned architect Sir Herbert Baker in 1939, the building serves as the headquarters of the Church of England; when the General Synod is not in session, the building is let for corporate banquets, conferences and seminars.
The Conference Centre’s technical supervisor Ben Pain first approached technical consultant Nigel Luby in 2005 to carry out an acoustic analysis. This duly led to his company AVSYS.DC completely renewing the AV system in the main Assembly Hall (and four smaller rooms), placing them all on a single network.
However, the real feature of AVSYS.DC’s installation is its bespoke nature, with custom solutions devised for almost every problem encountered in the acoustically unforgiving rotunda.
Luby was indebted to the help provided by Fuzion, in advising on a ribbon driver delayed solution around the perimeter of the balcony area using Radia Pro drivers. Sister company Kelsey Acoustics, meanwhile, supplied all the cabling, including 370 lines of Starquad analogue cable, SP/DIF digital audio tie lines, digital coax video and BBC-spec triax cable. The whole system is run bi-directionally.
Case study: Yamaha systems installed in an innovative oratory
THE ST ANTONINO Martire parish of St Antonino Ticino in the Italian province of Varese recently redefined the concept of oratories – traditionally the centre of social life in Roman Catholic parishes – with the inauguration of its Opera Grassi Oratory, a real multifunction centre to all effects. The building, designed by architect Giorgio Luini and built thanks to benefactor Emilio Grassi, includes a gym that can become a theatre for various types of events, complete with sound reinforcement; a meeting room complete with a bar which, as well as being a meeting point for parishioners, is also a conference facility equipped with a system for screening films with 5.1 audio; and – on the floor above – a study centre for youngsters and a series of rooms for seminars and so forth.
The audio systems were installed by Telesystem Professional in the Oratory, which was inaugurated in February. They were designed by Pierluigi Pecchenini of Direct Field Engineering, who described the various zones involved: “For each system solution in the two main rooms – the bar zone and the gym – there’s a Yamaha DME24N Digital Mixing Engine, which controls all data and signals arriving from the rooms, such as microphones, players and so on, as well as the rooms’ various reinforcement configurations.”
Case study: The Basilica of Lourdes, France
CLAIMING TO BE the most visited pilgrimage shrine in all of Christendom, the Basilica of Lourdes is the largest with a 25,000-person capacity. The challenges of tremendous reverb (17 seconds at 350Hz) was addressed by acoustic engineer GAMBA and reduced to 10 seconds after treatment. The systems installer, Audiomaster, was charged with making all the technology visually discreet, without any alterations to the building itself.
The prior acoustic research showed that the consistency of the signal was deteriorated beyond 20m. On the other side, the measured random noise went up to 55dB, due to the large reverberation of the concrete walls. Therefore, a powerful speaker system was required to get rid of these constraints from a height of 11m.
The VRX series are arranged in clusters of two, three or four speakers, in order to cover the central part of the Basilica. Their fixed position between two arches makes them almost invisible from the perspective view. There are 68 VRX loudspeakers used in total.
The whole periphery (gangway) of the Basilica has been reinforced by JBL JRX112MI (30) speakers in a shower configuration. In this way, there are no gaps in the sound cover. Additionally for rehearsals of the choirs and the organs, a special area has been created to allow this part to be covered by four JRX112MI.