Ashly delivers intelligible speech
Published: WORSHIP
US: New York state firm AV Solutions has designed and installed a new audio system for St Joseph University Church in Buffalo, replacing loudspeakers that had been in place for 10 years.
A 160-year old place of worship, the stone architecture of the current church holds 800 congregants. Above its traditional cross-shaped stone floor are white stone pillars and walls with stained glass stretching up to a 13m plaster ceiling, creating a lingering reverb to say the least. Dedicated in 1925, the stone interior now has highly directive Klein & Hummel loudspeakers coupled to an Ashly Protea ne24.24M digital signal processor.
‘The room is almost 30m long with a very tall ceiling, and nothing to absorb sound except for the church members,’ said Karl Maciag, design engineer with AV Solutions. ‘The previous system was an afterthought in the glare of a major structural renovation. The loudspeakers, which were placed on every other stone column from the pulpit to the rear wall, had an inappropriately wide beam width. Even worse, none of them were delayed. Rather than dealing with the very serious challenges presented by the room’s acoustics, the old system actually exacerbated them!’
More than anything, St Joseph needed intelligible speech reinforcement. Members of the congregation regularly complained that sermons were difficult, and sometimes impossible, to hear. In addition, a gospel choir joined one of the services each weekend, tying into the house sound system via the output from an onstage mixer.
Mr Maciag specified Klein & Hummel Pro X 6 N loudspeakers, which have a well-defined 90 x 60-degrees beam width. ‘Using very controlled loudspeakers with a tighter coverage pattern was a big help,’ he said. ‘We were able to aim them very precisely so as to excite ears and not walls.’ A rack of Crown CTs 600 amplifiers provides power, while the Ashly Protea ne24.24M DSP delivers all of the frequency-domain controls to remove energy that detracts from intelligibility and all of the time-domain delays to synchronise the direct sound waves throughout the sanctuary. An Ashly WR-5 wall-mounted remote control supplies user control of input volume.
‘The Ashly ne24.24M was ideal for number of reasons, but its modularity was probably the most important,’ explained Mr Maciag. ‘The church was unsure of how many inputs they wanted, and they were speculating about adding additional loudspeaker channels down the road. With the ne24.24M, we could start at a 4x4 configuration and then add inputs or outputs as needed. In fact, before the installation was completed, they did decide to add some inputs. We just added another input card to the back of the unit and we were ready to go. On top of that, the price is very competitive and Ashly’s support has always been peerless. Finally, I have a concert audio background and Ashly got its start in that industry. Ashly processors sound great, and I know what to expect.’
Like all Ashly NE-Series processors and amps, the ne24.24M is network enabled out of the box, which Mr Maciag put to good use. He linked the unit into the church’s wireless network and then used his laptop to tune the system from the pews. ‘Not only that,’ he laughed, ‘I tuned it during the first weekend’s masses. I got some pretty funny looks using a laptop in church, but that was the only way to tune the system with all of the absorption – er, people – in place.’