The Cathedral Church at Dromore, serving a parish of the Anglican-connected Church of Ireland, was built in stages over several centuries. Major portions of the existing structure date back to 1661. "It was a nightmare, really," explains Robert Andrews of Andrews Audio (Portglenone), who designed and installed both systems. "They rebuilt and added on to (the building) to the point where there is absolutely nothing symmetrical about the church. The seating goes off all different ways, so there was no way to use a main cluster with delays in such a reverberant space."
Andrews' solution for Dromore's architectural mélange employs five UPM-1P compact wide coverage loudspeakers. Solid bass reinforcement for the praise band is provided through a pair of UMS-1P subwoofers. Other key components at the system front end include a Soundcraft LX7 24-channel console, a BSS FDS 960 equaliser, eight Sennheiser hard-wired microphones, and three Sennheiser Evolution Series wireless microphones.
Compared to the Dromore Cathedral, the 1st Portglenone Presbyterian Church is both relatively recent (1872) and architecturally homogenous, although parishioners here were equally adamant about minimising impact on the aesthetics of their meticulously preserved neo-Gothic building.
For coverage of the wide auditorium and overhanging rear balcony, Andrews specified a central flown point-source array consisting of four M1D ultra-compact curvilinear array loudspeakers and one M1D-Sub ultra-compact subwoofer, with under-balcony coverage from two UPM-2P compact narrow coverage loudspeakers. A single UPM-1P cabinet supplies downfill for seating underneath the main array.
(Jim Evans)
