Churches can present several acoustic and lighting problems to installers, brought on by ornate interior design, numerous reflective surfaces and open areas subject to reverberation and boom.

Gone are the days when a priest and the choir had to battle for one overworked microphone during a church service. Today, some houses of worship are leading the way in AV installations, and custom installers have seen the light.

You might think this topic is strictly Pro AV and therefore of little interest to custom installers. But the line between the two continues to blur, and knowledge of Pro AV installations could serve as the key to expanding your business.

Lawson, NSW-based installation firm Blazon has worked on almost a dozen churches across New South Wales, and installer Ron Polglaze says the biggest challenge is finding a system that works both aesthetically and acoustically.

“Most churches are established buildings that generations have grown up with. A lot of the older ones have been built as passive amplifiers, so the centre focus is behind the altar where you can’t place a speaker cluster,” he says.

“There are a lot of highly reflective, parallel walls, with art or inscriptions that can’t be covered. Many buildings have added a sonic mirror (glass wall) and several chapels along the sides to muddy the reverberation calculations.

“Generally you can’t do much to the fabric of the building, and textile banners or wall hangings are simple and affordable methods of reducing reflections and the reverberation time.”

Further, Ron says bass traps are a “nuisance-type hazard in churches” and usually, whatever bass absorption occurs in the building is insignificant when compared to the absorption by the congregation.

Maintaining ventilation in the system rack is also essential, and it’s sometimes necessary to drill holes into existing racks to ensure sufficient airflow through the shelves.

“It’s a good idea to leave space between the amps and a gap from the amps to the control electronics. Cutting the tops and bottoms off the rack doors to allow airflow is often the only solution when re-using an old wooden rack.”

In particular, Ron says articulation and intelligibility are two important requirements, as the congregation is there to hear the spoken word. But things get difficult when hearing-impaired parishioners and microphone-phobic readers are thrown into the mix.

“A good quality condenser microphone with an extended dynamic range is a must. There is a growing trend towards more dynamic services, and you need to be mindful of spectrum outside the speech band.

“The other main challenge, of course, is to convince the client that it really is necessary to invest a lot more money than they have usually budgeted for. Throwing together a system from a car-radio shop where their cousin can get a really good deal on a sick-to-the-max doof doof system with flashing lights in the subs is not the way to go.”

Given the difficult nature of church installations, speaker placement involves a compromise between aesthetics and practicality. An installer can easily sense where sound needs to be directed, but it’s not always the ideal location.

“Once you have established where to mount the speakers safely, securely and unobtrusively, map the required coverage and select speakers that will meet requirements,” Ron says.

“It’s essential to trust the manufacturer’s specifications for frequency response, horizontal and vertical dispersion and efficiency. Inevitably, small in-fill speakers are required and the biggest problem is to discretely run a cable to them.”

In this case, a wireless option may be considered. And while Ron believes this technology is extremely useful and reliable, it’s important to use a good quality system as inferior products are questionable in their performance reliability.

“Cheaper radio microphones can compromise the performance of the whole system. Wireless microphones are handy in a procession and the lack of a cable is a plus for ease of use and safety.”

Ron says that correctly setting the gain structure and shaping the microphone input allows for the best possible quality of capture of sound by the system.

“The correct selection of microphone is vital. Once an optimum signal is set in the mixer, processing and routing can be adjusted to suit the performers and audience by the use of scenes. In-depth discussions with stakeholders will give you an indication of what scenarios need to be catered for.”

The calibration of audio is the next step, and measuring the space will allow calculation of the required delay times.

“Pink noise is fed into the system and a real time analyser (RTA) is deployed. A RTA with a good quality pick-up microphone will give you an indication of any problem areas. Parametric equalisation is usually best to level out the frequency response of the system.

“We test and correct each speaker individually, and then all together. For the microphones, we bring the channels up to the start of the feedback, and then back-off slightly. We then bring up multiple microphones and run with as much gain as possible. The RTA shows any peaks or troughs and the parametrics on the input channels can be adjusted.”

To get an idea of what to tweak, Ron suggests listening to familiar music that correlates closely with the intended use of the system.

“I use Heaven Sent and Devil Inside by INXS, to the great merriment of a jovial priest. Even when using the RTA, it’s important to listen and test at as many points as possible.”

Given the difficult nature of church installations, speaker placement involves a compromise between aesthetics and practicality. An installer can easily sense where sound needs to be directed, but it’s not always the ideal location.

A miracle occurs in Sydney
In 2009, Blazon teamed up with distributor Audio Products Group (APG) to give a Sydney church a modern makeover.

Located less than 10km from the centre of Sydney, Ashfield’s St Vincent’s Catholic Church is bounded by the village atmosphere of Summer Hill and the Italian and Greek influenced restaurants, cafés and patisseries of Leichhardt.

Blazon’s original brief was to have excellent audio quality throughout the church irrespective of where you were seated. This could only be achieved by upgrading the church’s existing Bose sound system.

Together with APG, Blazon created a new sound system to meet the current needs of the church while also addressing future requirements. Luckily, there were no heritage protection restrictions to burden the installation.

All the microphones within the church were upgraded to AKG and comprised of ELLEC Condenser and C547BL premium boundary microphones, plus a 50cm gooseneck. These microphones provided intelligible audio to all areas of the church so the entire congregation could clearly hear the priest’s sermons.

The amplification comprised of TOA A2120 120W and A2240 240W mixer amplifiers, and Peavey PV1500 dual 550W amplifiers being fed by a Peavey 16FX 16-channel mixer that provided all the microphone and line-inputs. TOA DA-250DH digital power amplifiers were also used.

The signals from the mixer were fed into a Peavey VSX26 speaker controller that provided outputs for the front and rear speakers, the delayed settings for fill and cry room speakers and two small subwoofers. The VSX26 also provided all the EQ and electronic crossover functionality for the installation.

To meet the issues of direct and reflected sound, a combination of TOA slim line array and F Series wide dispersion speakers were selected. TOA SRS4 series column line array speakers were designed to provide tight dispersion patterns (90° horizontal and 0° vertical) and low distortion.

The church is highly reverberant so TOA SRS4L speakers were placed low on the side walls and used at lower volume levels to reduce reverberant effects in the main room and to keep as much of the congregation directly on axis within the speaker’s dispersion pattern. Two TOA FB120 subwoofers were also employed to enhance the performance of the system when used with live music.

Cry rooms and the foyer were all on a delay from the PV VSX Peavey loudspeaker management system, where they fed TOA A2240 and A2120 amplifiers. The beautiful upstairs choir loft used TOA F2000WT (white finish) wide dispersion speakers for upper room fill and another two were installed at the front of the church to provide fill for the altar area.

In an effort to make sure even the hearing impaired could receive quality sound, the Australian-designed and manufactured I-amp GPT20 20W induction loop amplifier was also installed. Induction loop amplifiers enabled hearing impaired people to receive signals to their hearing aids via base-band electromagnetic field, provided they were in the area of the loop system.

St Francis sees the light
Lighting installations in a church can also stand as a challenge for installers. The ambience in a church is a blend of reverence, history and kaleidoscope of light. If any elements are missing, however, the aura will fall short of its potential.

This was the problem for the Church of St Francis of Assisi in Wednesbury, United Kingdom, where the architecture and atmosphere were let down by an unflattering and poorly functional fluorescent lighting scheme.

Lightmaster Direct, a member of Philips Dynalite’s Dimension dealer accreditation and training program, was given the task of enhancing the ambience and practicalities of the lighting.

The system was awkward to control and expensive to maintain, as the design incorporated both functional and architectural lighting. On top of this, St Francis was also a heritage-listed building.

“We were restricted where we could route the cabling. However, the compact nature of the Philips Dynalite multipurpose controllers meant that we could use the small attic spaces on each side of the church,” Lightmaster design director Richard Nock says.

“It was necessary to completely scaffold the inside of the building, even though the church was in continual use during installation. The time factor presented a major challenge, as it was important to complete the work in time for Christmas.”

Bespoke dimmable wall uplighters allowed for a range of lighting levels to be achieved, from bright crisp light to a warm candlelit effect. Low-energy fluorescent fittings helped minimise energy usage, while the altar and lectern were lit by low-voltage halogen lighting.

Architectural lighting effects were accomplished through a mixture of spotlights, uplighters and LEDs. Miniature spotlights were located on the ceiling; uplighters provided a wash of light on the walls and highlighted the windows. LED strip-lighting illuminated the hand-painted arches, and LED spotlights lit up the gold-leafed St Francis on the roof.

Underpinning this design was a lighting control system comprising 48 lighting channels, controlled by six multipurpose controllers. These featured a hardware-configurable design, where plug-in output cards accommodated specific loads assigned to the system. The use of these multipurpose controllers meant that a single controller provided trailing edge, relay, and DSI ballast control as required in each area of the church, precluding the need for multiple control units

The entire lighting control system was founded on Philips Dynalite’s peer-to-peer communications serial bus network, DyNet. This linked the controllers with six Revolution 2 user interface wall panels and two ceiling-mounted IR sensors that received signals from a specifically programmed remote control.

There were 15 preset lighting scenes programmed for the main church, and four for each of the side chapels. The remote control and wall panels could discreetly alter the lighting in accordance with different aspects of a service, and a slow fade-time helped to provide an atmospheric transformation.