St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Case Study
St. Joseph’s was ready for a sound system and technology refresh for the Nave. The current system worked, but was dated and not meeting the needs or expectations of the congregation. Once Audio-Video Group was part of the process, we were able to come alongside the church and help navigate the process of understanding the different features available with today’s technology. In the end, a strong balance between features and budget was met for a new system.
A particular point of interest (or feature) from the church’s perceptive was to include an automatic, or hands free solution, to control the sound levels. Audio-Video Group has designed many systems around Biamp’s digital audio processors to do just that. Audio-Video Group was able to use the Nexia CS to manage the entire sound system processing. This device provided all the necessary processing such as equalization and level controls. If automatic mixing was not enough, Audio-Video Group added Biamp’s Volume Select 8 so that the operation could control programmable points of the system to suite their wants and needs.
Audio-Video Group was faced with another challenge on this project; acoustics. While the acoustics were not bad, they were definitely reverberant. Audio-Video Group utilized Community’s Enstasys 200 series speakers for the coverage of the Nave. These speakers are typically referred as a two-way column array speaker. Essentially, each speaker is made up of a series of smaller speakers in a vertical column. This type of technology is very effective in spaces that are considered reverberant. Two sets of speakers were place on the side walls to provide coverage to the room. The speaker system works great and everybody in the room can hear the message with no problem.
A final challenge for the church was that a number of its members are elderly and hard of hearing. Even with Audio-Video Group’s implementation of a well-designed system, the church needed additional help. For these members, a Listen Technology assisted listening system was installed in parallel with the speaker system. This technology places a wireless receiver with headphones in the user’s hand. In essence the user gets a direct audio feed from the sound system to a pair of head phones where they can then control their own individual volume level.
This project is just one of our many success stories. If you would like to hear more about the sound system upgrade at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church or how Audio-Video Group can assist in your next technology refresh please contact us at 301-668-4448 or at our website: www.audiovideogroup.com
Links
http://www.stjosephemmitsburg.org/
http://www.communitypro.com/productlist/430-entasys200