Episcopal School of Dallas Finds Audio Intelligibility in Modern Worship

Tannoy QFlex install brings clarity to school’s All Saints Chapel despite ancient Greek design and concrete walls.

Just as All Saints Chapel is the heart of spiritual life at this prestigious Dallas area school, the Chapel’s dual manual, twenty seven-stop organ – designed specifically for the school by organ-master, Fritz Noack – is the heart of the chapel. Intentionally designed to have a long, smooth reverberation time, the Chapel favors sonic sources like their magnificent organ and ensemble vocals, but when it comes to speech, small musical ensembles or program music, its stark Greek design and vertical concrete walls become a liability.

In addition to a solid education, The Episcopal School of Dallas emphasizes daily worship, service to others, and places a high value on the inherent worth of each individual student. As the site of daily worship services for the entire student body, it is central to fulfilling their faith-based mandate. But, as services at All Saints have come to be more encompassing of different forms of worship, the limitations of the previous ‘pew back’ sound system have become ever more glaring, making it far more difficult to speak clearly to that mandate from the chapel’s pulpit.

A solution was found with the recent installation of Tannoy’s QFlex line of digitally steerable, multi- channel, array speakers. Since the Tannoy QFlex rig went in this past Spring, explains Matthew Noack, director of real estate at the school, a torrent of complaints fielded by the school’s Founder, Father Swan, have become a steady stream of compliments. “It’s a huge change,” he says. “Before, people could not understand the sermon if they were in the back of the chapel. This has brought back the spoken word as a very clear component to our worship.”

“This was an extremely reverberant space,” says Bob Higginbotham, partner and COO of Admiral Communications/AV, the design/build integrators of the system.  “It wasn’t so much a case of achieving better intelligibility. They wanted intelligibility, period.”

While the pre-existing system attempted to address the chapel’s reverberant nature with a large number of loudspeakers, providing fairly localized sound reinforcement, it simply wasn’t effective. “The critical distance is not quite halfway back in the audience,” says Higginbotham. “With the reverberation time around 4.2 seconds, you could literally be 15 feet away from someone, carrying on a conversation, and miss most of what they said.   Introducing energy from multiple sources only made matters worse."

Add to that the physical footprint of the previous system - the sheer number of ‘pew back’ speakers needed to even make a stab at solving the 700-800 capacity chapel’s audio problems – and it’s fair to say a good number of the congregation felt like they were worshipping with a loudspeaker sitting right in their laps. Hardly an ideal experience and something Higginbotham kept firmly in mind when he was asked to provide a solution for All Saints.

Bob's first thought was to install another distributed system, incorporating a variety of boxes mounted along the chapel’s walls.  While that may have spoken effectively to issues of intelligibility it could only interfere with its intrinsic charm with the chapel’s clean white walls, wood and marble accents, stained glass windows, and a ceiling mounted tensegrity resembling a crown of thorns . “It would have looked terrible and would have focused the sound from the wrong direction,” Higginbotham says bluntly. A QFlex system, on the other hand, with its steep steering angle of +/-70 degrees and sleek modern lines, was ideal.

After Admiral and Tannoy demonstrated the QFlex array’s benefits during services at All Saints, using a single QFlex 32, the school agreed.

To address both the acoustic and aesthetic concerns, the existing system was scrapped entirely. Higginbotham identified three discreet zones within the space and proposed a far leaner system to target them more effectively: one QFlex 40 mounted 35’ above the altar to cover the front seating area; two QFlex 16’s mounted roughly 40 feet out from the altar to each side of the center aisle and hidden high in the architectural features of the tensegrity, covering the rear; and two similarly unobtrusive Tannoy i9’s pointing down and back toward the chancel, providing controlled, but wide coverage to that area.

“Whenever we want excellent intelligibility in a challenging space and the client is really trying to achieve a musical sound, more than just speech reinforcement, we typically use Tannoy,” says Higgenbotham. “I’ve been a long time fan all the way through their product line. “ And although this is the first QFlex system Admiral has installed, they wouldn’t hesitate to spec the product again. “I was very hands on for this build. The ability to overcome such a ridiculous reverberation time and end up with a system that had good intelligibility and an ambience that fit the space intrigued me. You could never pull this off with traditional speakers.”

Powersoft Expanding Green Design to Amplifier Line

LEED Certified engineers say customers are requesting ecology-conscious technology and manufacturing techniques.

With industry attention focused on finding green alternatives for installations, Powersoft, a leading manufacturer of digital power amplifiers for the professional audio market, is expanding its intrinsic green approach with the design and manufacturing of Powersoft amplifiers. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified design engineers and consultants are looking to specify equipment that not only reduces the carbon footprint of an installation but positively affects the long-term bottom line, while providing quality performance. The LEED Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in Washington, D.C., provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction.

“More and more of the projects we are working on are requesting that we meet requirements for LEED-credit for facilities that are being built,” says Vance Breshears, LEED-accredited design consultant for Acoustic Dimensions and veteran of over 500 installations worldwide. “Because of their efficiency, Powersoft amplifiers deliver significant green advantages for any installation and that can contribute to a project gaining LEED certification. If you look at power consumption over time, an installation with Powersoft will realize a substantial cost savings. Because the amplifiers utilize power efficiently, they generate less heat and therefore require less cooling than other amplifiers. That is another area for substantial savings. Further, because all models have a small footprint, they use up less rack space.”

Breshears says Powersoft amplifiers’ green design manufacturing approach encompasses this philosophy. He says the sub-assembly circuit cards incorporated into each amplifier are manufactured by high-end, aerospace manufacturers that are themselves green-run operations.  And Breshears points out that the Powersoft production plant in Bologna, Italy, employs extensive solar panel arrays to provide plant electricity. Powersoft has also created a registered Green Audio Power logo to demonstrate its commitment to green design.

“I think it’s great that Powersoft has taken the initiative to say green manufacturing is important. Powersoft is producing a better product and the end user gains a better system,” states Jeff Miller, LEED accredited senior design consultant for Acoustic Dimensions who designed the sound system for the new Moonlight Amphitheater in Vista, CA. “From my standpoint, I can now say to a client there are options in the marketplace if you care about being green, if you want a more efficient system and if you want to spend less on electricity and cooling.  Powersoft is pursuing building a better, greener product from the ground up. While other manufacturers are starting to look at green aspects of production and operation, Powersoft has emerged as an early leader. This is admirable, especially because the company did this entirely on its own.”

Powersoft Managing and R&D Director Claudio Lastrucci adds, “We designed our products to be very ‘green’ friendly and we think this aspect of Powersoft will become increasingly important in the coming years. We are taking great care to take advantage of our new, green-run manufacturing facility to further our company commitment to produce an excellent product that is friendly to the environment on every level.”

For more information on Nexo products, visit pro-audio.powersoft.it.

Robe Launches New Website

In March 2009, Guest Conductor and Violinist Pinchas Zukerman led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in an acclaimed concert at Northland, a Church Distributed in Longwood, Fla. Meyer Sound Constellation electroacoustic architecture provided an acoustical environment in Northland's 3,000-seat sanctuary as the symphony touched the audience performing the musical masterpieces of Stravinsky and Schumann.

New graphics and navigation system installed in an effort to make product information easier to find.

Constellation enables multipurpose venues such as Northland to enhance their room acoustics at the press of a button, allowing them to host a wide range of events and provide the acoustics most appropriate for the audience and performers, while remaining invisible to the eye.

With the physical characteristics of Northland's room optimized for amplified music, the success of the Dallas Symphony concert is notable, and made an impression on Mark Melson, the symphony's vice president of artistic operations. "I was worried when I first walked into the building," confesses Melson, after seeing the vast, wide room, "but my worries ended when the musicians started playing. The orchestra retained its natural warmth and presence at seats well out into the hall."

Constellation incorporates the physical acoustics of a space with powerful technology and expert services to create flexible acoustical environments. The Constellation system at Northland includes presets that provide a range of reverberation times and level settings, supporting not only symphonic events but also reinforced sound and congregational singing. The Constellation system has helped the sanctuary accommodate the diverse acoustic needs of the Florida Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, country star Wynonna, gospel music singer Kirk Franklin, and contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith.

In order to emulate the reverberation characteristics of the Morton H. Meyerson Center, the Dallas Symphony's acoustically impeccable home, Steve Ellison, director of applications, LCS Series, created a customized setting of early decay time (EDT) and reverberation time (RT). The resulting system had an RT of 2.4 seconds and an EDT of 1.9 seconds, very close to the Meyerson measurements of 2.6 seconds RT and 1.9 seconds EDT.

The sound quality during the event was certainly appreciated by the audience—including Dallas Symphony President Douglas Adams. "I was frankly amazed at how well the [Constellation] system worked," says Adams. "What I found particularly impressive is how I could maintain a clear sense of the origination of different instruments at various places around the stage. Each was perceived in its proper place, as it would be with natural acoustics."

The concert is a revelation to Marc McMurrin, Northland's executive director of operations, who reports that Constellation is a valuable asset as he offers Northland as a viable alternative performance space to organizations such as the Festival of Orchestras, a group dedicated to bringing symphonies to Central Florida. Already scheduled are Florida's Naples Philharmonic in October and the Detroit Symphony with conductor Leonard Slatkin in early 2010.

"Our senior pastor, Joel Hunter, refers to our new building as 'a communication device with a sanctuary attached,'" says McMurrin. "Having the technology to present symphonic music gives us a great tool for communication, one that helps us in our mission to serve the whole community."

Completed in late 2007, the Longwood sanctuary of Northland, a Church Distributed was the world's first house of worship to incorporate Meyer Sound's Constellation electroacoustic architecture. The system encompasses MS-Constellation processors, MS-VRAS processors, Mic-Omni Constellation microphones, as well as the company's most compact and versatile loudspeaker models including UPJ-1P compact VariO loudspeakers, UPM-1P loudspeakers, and MM-4 miniature loudspeakers. Independent of the Constellation system, the sound reinforcement setup utilizes MILO line array loudspeakers, CQ-1, CQ-2, UPJ-1P, and UPM-1P loudspeakers, in addition to M3D-Sub directional subwoofer, with system processing and drive supplied by a Galileo loudspeaker management system.

The building was designed by DCA Architects and Building God's Way, with Daniel Cook as principal architect. The Northland Constellation system was designed by Sierra Madre, Calif.-based Platt Design Group and installed by the Burbank office of Electrosonic Systems, Inc., with final system tuning handled by Bob McCarthy, senior design consultant of Meyer Sound.

For more information, visit www.robelighting.com.