Originally founded in Saxon times, by the late 1800s the church of St Mary Bredin was an imposing and ornate Victorian building. In 1942 it was destroyed by a Luftwaffe air raid which devastated much of Canterbury and it wasn't until 1957 that a replacement church was constructed on a new site around half a mile away.
Happily the 1957 building is still standing firm and, unlike many churches, its congregation has seen steady growth in recent years. In 2008/09 the church undertook its latest building project, which involved making major changes to the main body of the building by turning the orientation through 90ยบ from the traditional alignment to services being conducted from a stage on the 'long' side of the nave.
An integral part of the project was to improve the church acoustics and provide a new, permanent sound reinforcement system, all of which was designed by Norwich-based Adrian James Acoustics and installed by R G Jones.
"Previously the church had built up a rather ad-hoc system, mainly comprising small gig-style speakers on stands," says Ian Rees, the project acoustician for Adrian James Acoustics.
"The church services are quite contemporary, often featuring a live rock band and the system needs to be able to deal with a range of audio sources, so the sound reinforcement had to be very flexible and able to be used simply or in a more complex way, as required."
To achieve this, while maximising sound quality for all uses, Rees specified an Alcons system comprising two mini arrays of four flown LR14 cabinets each side plus couple of BF302 2x 15 subs, all powered by ALC4st amplifiers.
"The LR14 system was ideal for this application as speech is just as important as music in the church, if not more so," says Rees. "With conventional systems, the ideal frequency range for speech falls in between the optimum frequencies for tweeters and drivers. But the frequency range of the Alcons pro-ribbon drivers is exactly right, maximising the audio quality."
(Jim Evans)
