The sound system which served it so well for the past 30 years was recently decommissioned and a new infrastructure designed and specified by media consultant, Rolf Mayer of Bischofsheim-based IFB Consulting. The audio network was based on a QSC digital Q-Sys platform.
Over 1000-years-old, this Romanesque Cathedral - with its striking red fascia which dominates the Mainz skyline - spans a length of 116m, while the ceiling height ranges between 28 and 54m.. From an acoustics perspective this produces an extraordinarily long reverberation time of up to 12 seconds - not an insignificant challenge to overcome.
In providing superior audio in an environment for congregations of up to 4,000 people, Herr Mayer decided that when considering the components best fit for the purpose, high intelligibility had to be the primary consideration. He added that a digital backbone with complex routing and low-latency signal transport over standard TCP/IP hardware, and a sophisticated routing matrix offering an advanced control and monitoring solution, were indicated. However, latency issues with CobraNet remained a concern. "Operationally the system also needed to be intuitive, and usable by non-technicians. Finally we had to think about the logistics and the cable laying - as the audio and video in church needed to be extremely flexible."
Reviewing the available options, Mayer spoke to Torsten Haack, project & sales manager Audio Systems, from QSC Audio's German distributors, Shure Distribution. Haack immediately recognized the Q-Sys digital platform as the most capable and elegant solution for the project and presented a number of key attributes to make the point - astonishing processing power and capacity, advanced crosspoint mixing /switching, the redundancy design of the network and its ease of programming (with no third party boxes required).
As a result, the Q-Sys solution, including a Core 1000 processor and six I/O Frames, were specified and installed and the new digital environment fully implemented.
(Jim Evans)
