St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church invests in Lectrosonics
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: Recognising the importance of delivering a high level of speech intelligibility and music reproduction to its congregation, US HOW, St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church recently invested in a new sound reinforcement system, featuring audio processing and wireless microphone technology from Lectrosonics.
Technical Services Group (TSG) was brought into the project by David Hebert of GHA Architects to install the new equipment. After meeting with church management, the TSG team ultimately deployed a wireless microphone setup consisting of a Lectrosonics Venue modular receiver mainframe stocked with five VRS receiver modules, along with two HH handheld transmitters, five LMa beltpack transmitters, plus two M152/5P lavaliere microphones and two SNA600 adjustable dipole antennas.
To ensure optimised signal management, the TSG team also equipped the church with a Lectrosonics Aspen SPN1624 (16 input/ 24 output) audio processor that was augmented by an SPN16i 16-input expansion unit.
‘Services at St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church are quite traditional,’ explained TSG’s Scott Richard, the firm’s A/V designer. ‘So as you can appreciate, the ability of the roughly 2,500 strong congregation to understand clearly what’s being said during a sermon is absolutely essential. If the audience can’t clearly understand, it becomes impossible to relate to the subject matter. Further, the audio system’s ability to function largely unattended was equally important and, for this reason, the deployment of the Lectrosonics Aspen processing system, with its automixing and feedback elimination parameters, would help ensure trouble-free operation.’
The Aspen processing system is also managing the monitor mixing for both the choir and the piano/keyboard station. Overall, the system is managing 32 input channels, all of which was programmed by Jason Martin using the Aspen control software. Of particular note, the Aspen system offers the ability to be controlled via an Apple iPad tablet. In this particular application, the iPad provides the ability to manage volume level control for the main loudspeakers as well as for the transept loudspeakers, with each microphone being configured for independent level control.
‘Everything’s been working really well,’ said Patrick Meek, TSG’s vice president of sales and marketing. ‘The Pastor, Father Trey, is ecstatic over the positive reaction he’s received from the parishioners as well as his own personal satisfaction with the system. St. Jude’s audio system is a first-rate setup and much of its performance attributes are directly related to the quality of the Lectosonics’ audio processing and wireless mic equipment. We are extremely pleased with the final results.’