Following a number of less-than-stellar PA upgrades, Kansas City, Mo., AV integrator Advanced Sound & Communication (ASC) came on board to design and install a system to make Saint Sabina Church in Belton, Mo.,sound as good as it looks.
Founded in 1944 in Belton, Mo., as a Catholic parish community, Saint Sabina's mission is to provide faith formation for all. In 2003, the parish dedicated an architecturally unique worship space that enables greater accessibility and versatility to serve its diverse, growing congregation. All it lacked was an audio system to round out the space.
Challenge
Consistent coverage and high fidelity were required from compact, full-range speakers with minimal visual impact on church architecture and iconography. Precise pattern control and extended low-frequency control were also essential to keep sound off hard, reverberant surfaces lacking acoustic treatment.
Solution
"Previous Saint Sabina Church sound systems using line array and column speakers failed to provide clear, uniform coverage throughout the sanctuary," explains ASC Systems Consultant Brent Handy. "Rather than using a long 55-foot throw to the back of the church, our approach was to get high-fidelity, point-source speakers as close to the congregation as possible to provide the same tone and sonic character to everyone."
"Rather than using a long 55-foot throw to the back of the church, our approach was to get high-fidelity, point-source speakers as close to the congregation as possible to provide the same tone and sonic character to everyone." Brent Hardy, Systems Consultant, ASC Systems
Specifics
Handy based his design on Fulcrum Acoustic's compact CX Series coaxial loudspeakers. To cover the center liturgical area, he reports that he deployed four downward-firing Fulcrum CX896 eight-inch coaxial speakers with 90-degree by 60-degree dispersion along the side wooden trusses. Each CX8 is backed by a CCX1265 12-inch cardioid coaxial loudspeaker on the opposite side of the truss directed at the horseshoe-shaped seating area. Two standalone CCX1265s with 60-degree by 45-degree horns provide even coverage for seating closest to the church entrance.
"Fulcrum had just launched their cardioid CCX product family, applying their patented Passive Cardioid Technology to their best-selling line of compact coaxial installation loudspeakers," Handy says. "The timing couldn't have worked out better for us as this truss-speaker design approach demanded cardioid patterns to minimize LF blowback and work within the architecture rather than fight against it."
Handy adds, "Saint Sabina's diverse musical styles include traditional keyboard with choir, contemporary instrumentation with praise singers, and Hispanic Ministry Masses with four guitars, two keyboards and drums playing upbeat Mexican arrangements." Church members love the musicality of the new system, he reports, which made their older systems "sound like AM radios."
