Located in the heart of downtown on Hamburg's major shopping hub, Mönckebergstrasse, the 1,033-seat Hauptkirche St. Petri is considered the 'city church' and opens its doors daily to offer on oasis of calm and a place to meet.
Cobra sound light engineer and project manager Hendrik Thode says the company's roots in live events is reflected in its approach to installations. "In live shows we always meet a new challenge. The fascinating job definition now is using new tools which offer new potential even in difficult locations for sound. We're not tied to any particular manufacturers and we consider everything that's out there. St. Petri was a big challenge as it has the typically difficult acoustical conditions of most churches.
"St. Petri church specifically wanted the loudspeakers not to intrude on the architecture. This ruled out flying a system in the sanctuary, and demanded a digitally steerable system because of the dimensions of the large central nave - approximately 25m long and 24m high inside the central and the side aisles - and the long reverberation time of around eight seconds. The system needed to deliver direct sound for perfect speech intelligibility to the rearmost pew."
A shoot-out proved IC Live loudspeakers to be the answer, and Cobra sound light duly installed a system consisting of four Renkus-Heinz ICL-F speakers for the central nave, with a further ICL-F to the right and left in to the sanctuary chamber.
The system is completed by a Yamaha LS9 digital mixer controlled by a simple user interface providing lay volunteers with just four presets to choose from depending on the type of service or event being held, and DPA headsets and Sennheiser wireless transmitters.
(Jim Evans)
