The venue, a listed building on the south side of the Thames Estuary that serves as a Victorian Maritime Museum and church, can now be used for conference, teaching, examinations and music, with Medway Council in particular employing its conferencing facilities for presentations and their larger congress meetings.
The building was originally dedicated by the Lord Bishop of Rochester, as St George's Church in December 1906, serving the needs of the Royal Navy Pembroke Barracks until the Navy's departure in 1984. Its name was then changed to St George's Centre and its doors opened to the public for the first time, revealing its historical naval memorials, plaques and ornate stained glass windows, some unveiled by HRH Princess Elizabeth in 1950.
The new audio system, supplied by Polar Audio, combines Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC8 digitally steerable array cabinets, a Biamp Nexus and a beyerdynamic MCWD wireless conference system.
Matthew Buck of Polar Audio commented, "The project was originally specified as a distributed delayed system, but because of constraints imposed by the fact that the building is listed, we proposed to the client that they should look at a more advanced solution, in particular Iconyx.
"Being a very long narrow room with hard, reflective surfaces everywhere, it's a tough room acoustically, but by taking advantage of Renkus-Heinz's BeamWare software we were able to direct the acoustic energy where it's required and deliver high intelligibility, despite the fact that the system is so unobtrusive as to be almost invisible. The client is very pleased with the results, which completely surpassed their expectations."
To cater for the varying needs of the church's new users while minimising cabling requirements and set-up times, Polar Audio recommended a wireless conferencing system, deploying a 61-way beyerdynamic MCWD wireless system including 60 delegate units and one chairman's unit with flightcased mobile chargers and PC-based control software. A Biamp Nexia CS DSP controller handles routing and signal processing.
(Jim Evans)
