Newly constructed Church of the Incarnation in Dallas recently received an Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) Anya sound reinforcement system designed to blanket its 500-seat worship space. The Episcopal church had a number of requirements for the new system – it needed to be heard but not seen, flexible enough to handle a variety of types of music, and because it is a highly reverberant space, the sound needed to stay off the walls to aid vocal intelligibility.
“The church is a Gothic-looking, long narrow room with traditional high ceilings and a slightly cruciform design. Aesthetics were a priority."
—RYAN KNOX, Consultant, Idibri, Addison, TX.
To handle the challenge, church leadership called up the Dallas-based system design group Idibri, who assigned Consultant Ryan Knox to the job.
“The church is a Gothic-looking, long narrow room with traditional high ceilings and a slightly cruciform design,” Knox explains. “Aesthetics were a priority. They had two insets to the left and right of the altar for sound reinforcement purposes which they hoped would accommodate a contemporary sound system that could handle full range music. It was a pretty tall order.”
From the standpoint of architectural design, the 60,000-square-foot Church of the Incarnation addition was designed in accordance with the English Gothic style typical of the middle ages -- with details inspired from more current versions of English Gothic Architecture already prevalent on the campus. The new facilities, completed by HH Architects of Dallas, include a chapel, three levels of education space, a large welcome and gathering space, and a new front entry. HH Architects reports that the overall layout was a challenge because the land is a long, linear property, with a street separating the existing contiguous campus.
Its work on the addition for Church of the Incarnation garnered HH Architects a CMAA Award for best building in renovation and modernization.
Loudspeaker form & function
Fortunately for Idibri's work on the project, EAW had recently introduced Anya, a complete, self-contained, high-power sound reinforcement system that adapts all performance parameters electronically. In addition, columns of Anya modules hang straight, without any vertical splay, uniquely allowing them to fit in the limited space set aside for loudspeakers.
“We specified two Anya modules for each array for two reasons: we thought that would be more than enough system for the room and also because they fit in the space allocated for loudspeakers,” Knox reports. “Anya solved a lot of problems from a design perspective and from the audio perspective.”
Knox used EAW’s Resolution 2 software to produce asymmetrical output that delivers coherent, full-range frequency response across the entire coverage area. Each Anya module includes fourteen 1-in exit / 35mm voice coil HF compression drivers loaded on a proprietary HF horn that expands to fill nearly the entire face of the enclosure. Six 5-in MF cone transducers, arranged in two columns of three, use Radial Phase Plugs and Concentric Summation Array technology to enter the horn and sum coherently with the HF wavefront. Dual 15-in LF cone transducers use Off-Center Aperture loading to increase the spacing of the apparent acoustical centers, extending effective horizontal pattern control well into the LF range.
“I was pleased that when we went to tune the system it required very little work beyond configuring the Resolution 2 software,” adds Knox. “On our first pass it was 90% of the way there – tweaked it a bit and we were set. The results match exactly what the modeling said it would.
Knox continues, "For this challenging application where aesthetics and acoustic performance were critical, Anya offered a compelling value ,,, the church is pleased with the result.”
