Riedel.net
Intercom panel
As more AV and media become more deeply integrated into religious services, including live streaming along with conventional broadcasting, and holiday event production, the ability of systems operators to communicate critically with each other becomes increasingly challenging. It’s why even more mid-sized churches are now integrating intercom systems into their media infrastructure.
At a time when live productions are becoming ever more elaborate and large-scale, the challenge that intercom systems developers face is the need to continually push the technology envelope, but at the same time keeping the other end of their product funnel as accessible and affordable as possible, for markets like house of worship.
Jay Wallace, Regional Sales Manager, Clear-Com
“It’s challenging, but we do it,” says Jay Wallace, a regional sales manager for Clear-Com, who cites the 2-wire partyline analog system the company has sold for 50 years as still viable for most church applications. “What you want to do in specifying a system is determine how many stations you need, what those stations do, and what kind of infrastructure is in place for an intercom system. Then, find the kind of system that works for that situation — analog partyline or digital matrix or IP or a hybrid of those.”
A bit of history
Intercom systems are fairly straight-ahead in what they do and how they do it, but it’s become a more diverse AV category in recent years. For decades, intercoms were either two-wire partyline or four-wire matrix systems. These systems were robust and simple to design, maintain and operate but had limited capacity and flexibility; a typical user could not choose whom to talk to, and would communicate with the same person or group of people until the system was manually reconfigured to allow communication with a different group of people. Wired intercoms have become considerably more sophist acted and capable in the last 20 years, but that time frame has also seen the rise of wireless intercom systems. These are easier to deploy and to reconfigure as needed, offer users more freedom of movement, and have a range of spectrum available, including the FM band (200–270 kHz), 494–608 MHz, 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz. However, they’re also vulnerable to RF interference from a wide array of sources, from police scanners to baby monitors, and they tend to cost more than wireless systems. Most recently, intercoms are migrating to IP-based transport, connected on a network accessed through Ethernet ports.
Intercoms move front & center
The proliferation of multi-campus churches substantially drove the uptake of modern signal transport and intercom systems in recent years, allowing satellite churches to trunk their AV content along with communications on fiber between locations. More recently, RF spectrum reallocation has made wireless communications more of an emphasis as churches reevaluated their larger wireless needs. These trends have put intercom technology more front and center in the HOW market, says Joe Commare, marketing manager at Riedel.
“Productions in churches have grown in complexity, with more content than ever before and more moving parts; it’s not just a pastor on a screen anymore,” he says, citing multilocation events such as the Passion conferences, which live-stream between remote locations in real time. “We have large MediorNet/Artist installs at a few of the multi-campus mega-churches. But at the same time, we’re stressing ease of use and scalability, because we’re very aware that their staff are often untrained volunteers and not every HOW is a mega-church.”
Commare suggests that systems designers and architects consider several key questions for intercom choices:
• How many people need to communicate?
• Is there a comms system in place now, and does it do everything you need it to do?
• Would all-wired comms work or would wireless be better/preferred?
• For larger churches: do you have remote campuses that need to be able to reliably communicate to coordinate productions?
“We’re seeing first-class productions in houses of worship, with Panasonic broadcast-quality cameras and Canon lenses and Ross switchers,” he says. “It makes sense that the quality of the intercom systems be able to match that.”
What is old can be made new
Guy Low, PR manager for RTS, says the good news around intercoms in recent years has been improvements in ease of use, which is always important for HOW users with their largely volunteer staffs, and the fact that some new systems can be integrated with many existing 2- and 4-wire intercom systems.
“The intercom isn’t as scary as it once was, especially IP-based intercom,” says Low. “What we’re seeing is a general demystification of this category, in part thanks to wider use of IP-based intercoms. For instance, our new flagship ODIN system is designed to make a professional matrix solution more accessible and easier to use than ever before, opening up the benefits of IP-based communications for users of all levels.”
He also suggests that designers and specifiers look into what infrastructure a church already has in place, with the expectation that at least some existing intercom components can be integrated with a newer one. “HOWs often have analog/two-wire RTS systems,” he says, “and the flexible connectivity and scalability modern systems like ODIN can enable this older equipment to integrate into the IP realm, extending the ROI of the original investment, which is also critical for budget-sensitive churches.”
Intercoms will only become more necessary going forward, going from a nice-to-have item to a necessity, adding cost and complexity to HOW AV designs. However, they’re also evolving in a way that works well for HOWs. For instance, Wallace points out that as intercom systems move deeper in the IT/IP realm, they can extend their networks even to personal mobile devices, potentially allowing an iPhone to become a node on an intercom network. “That’s something that our LQ series can do,” he says. “It’s an example of intercoms continuing to evolve but also stay accessible to a wide range of users.”
