7K Solutions brings new sound to St Anthony Claret Catholic Church
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: 7K Solutions recently installed an open-architecture Symetrix SymNet Solus 16 processor into the St Anthony Claret Catholic Church in California. The church’s musical ambitions and spoken word requirements have increased over the years, leading reverend Rudolph Preciado to contact 7K Solutions’ owner Paul Dexter in order to come up with a modern audio solution for the church.
‘Reverend Preciado will be retiring soon and he wanted to do something great for the church before he left,’ said Mr Dexter. ‘The old sound reinforcement system was not performing well. An early 1980s rack of analogue processing and amplification drove a ceiling full of full-range loudspeakers.’
When first constructed, the church used a pipe organ as the sole musical source and had only modest spoken word requirements. However today, the pipe organ is often joined by a choir and by a band that mixes itself on stage. Three microphones cover the choir, and Mr Dexter replaced the band’s old mixer with an Allen & Heath MixWizard. In addition, instead of utilising a boundary mic at the altar, St Anthony Claret now houses three wireless headset microphones for the priests, one wireless handheld microphone, and four optional podium microphones.
The stand-alone Symetrix SymNet Solus 16 is an open-architecture unit that provides 16 mic/line inputs and eight outputs, and the routing, logic and signal processing that Mr Dexter programmed was quite involved and reflected the specific uses and contexts of each input.
‘I started using Symetrix processing several years ago,’ continued Mr Dexter. ‘I’m not the sort of person who’s into taking classes and certifications, so I appreciate how really intuitive SymNet Designer is. But things always come up and I can call the Symetrix support staff any time and speak with someone who is knowledgeable and interested. The SymNet Solus 16 was the perfect solution at St Anthony Claret because I knew 16 inputs would be ample and eight outputs was all that were needed. The open-architecture programming would allow me to customise the system for the very particular needs of this church.’
Mr Dexter also corrected the church’s intelligibility issues with acoustic treatment and a single, nearly-point source loudspeaker cluster. ‘The walls, ceiling, floor and pews are all quite reflective,’ he said. ‘It was originally meant to amplify the pipe organ.’
As a solution, Mr Dexter placed absorptive panels on the ceiling, sidewalls and back wall, taking care to match the aesthetic of the church. He then placed several panels on the ceiling near the central loudspeaker cluster so as to minimise intelligibility-degrading early reflections. The loudspeakers comprise various Fulcrum Acoustic DX1265s powered by a number of Powersoft amplifiers.
A single Symetrix ARC-2e wall panel remote provides all of the user control for the system. Mr Dexter fixed the sanctuary’s output volume and then provided 10 steps of volume control for wireless microphones, the podium microphones, the choir microphones (all as groups) and the band’s on-stage mixer. Additional menu pages provide output volume for the choir monitor (which contains all content except the choir mics) and the cry room.
The SymNet Solus 16 also provides additional zone control for the foyer and each main loudspeaker. Zoning out the loudspeaker cluster allowed Mr Dexter to shade and tune each element to deliver even coverage from the front seat to the back wall.
‘The system is very effective,’ Mr Dexter asserted. ‘It sounds great and they don’t need an audio tech on hand. Reverend Preciado tested the system with us, and he walked all around the room and was overjoyed by how clear everything sounded. It’s so easy to use that we have never had to provide a formal training session – the reverend just pushed some buttons on the ARC-2e and he understood exactly how it works,’ he enthused.