The church has experienced many upgrades and renovations since the first cornerstone was placed in 1850. Unfortunately, none of the sound reinforcement systems seemed to solve the intelligibility issues caused by the highly reverberant space.
A traditional Catholic cathedral, the sanctuary is a long rectangular room with wooden pews that seat up to 1,200 parishioners. The room features beautiful stained glass, plaster walls, columns separating the main and side seating areas, and a small rear balcony, while the services are of a more traditional format, with a full choir and organ.
Joe Bennett, owner of Spectrum Sound located in nearby Summerville, South Carolina, was tasked with providing a sound reinforcement system that would give each mass the clarity it deserved.
"After a thorough review of the components in place it became obvious that the existing system was bits and pieces of older systems patched together," explains Bennett. "There were speakers firing everywhere. Frankly it was amazing that anyone could hear the services at all."
Bennett suggested installing new loudspeakers that would keep sound off of hard surfaces and on the parishioners where it belonged. After demonstrating Tannoy's VLS passive column loudspeakers, the facilities manager and the Monsignor were sold.
"They were very impressed with the natural and realistic sound quality of the loudspeakers," Bennett says. "They needed a system that would offer vocal intelligibility without sounding overly amplified - the VLS were perfect."
The first Tannoy loudspeakers to incorporate FAST - Focused Asymmetrical Shaping Technology - the VLS Series produce an asymmetrical vertical dispersion that gently shapes the acoustic coverage toward the lower quadrant of the vertical axis. The result is a passive loudspeaker that keeps the coverage on the audience and away from walls and ceilings.
A pair of VLS 30 column array loudspeakers were mounted on pillars in front of and to the left and right of the alter. Each box is loaded with 14 3.5-inch LF transducers mounted in vertical arrays with 16 1-inch HF transducers mounted co-axially over a section of the LF drivers. Each box produces a maximum average SPL of 120 dB - more than sufficient for the space.
"The installation was pretty straightforward," adds Bennett. "We are using the VLS loudspeakers with a Biamp AudioFlex system with auto-mixer - that's all it needs. We tweaked the system for a few days during Noon mass to make sure the EQ and auto-mix settings were all dialed in and it's been running like a charm ever since. The parishioners and church leaders are thrilled."
(Jim Evans)
