1 of 3
All photos courtesy Walter Lewis © 2017
2 of 3
3 of 3
For some time, Senior Pastor Granville McKenzie of Toronto church Faith Sanctuary hadn't been happy with the sound in the worship space. The church's tall, chalet-style structure with a wide, fan-shaped seating area, has been home for the last 15 years. Stone walls and other reflective surfaces diminished speech intelligibility and musical nuance, and consistent coverage was a constant challenge. The solution to the problem came after a conversation with a friend from a similarly designed sanctuary.
Pastor McKenzie had been a fan of the Bose Wave Music System for years. So when the colleague mentioned the Bose Professional RoomMatch system, McKenzie's ears perked up. “I love the Bose Wave and use it all the time,” he says. “It never occurred to me that they had translated their technology to a pro audio system. But based on that reputation and my experience with Bose, I was excited to try the RoomMatch system.”
The Bose Professional Territory Manager for Eastern Canada put the church in touch with Toronto-based AV systems integrator Westbury National, which then arranged for Jason Reynolds, owner of Anjel Music Productions and the church's Technical Director, to experience a RoomMatch installation at a show in Las Vegas. According to Reynolds, hearing the RoomMatch system in action in a space with similar acoustical challenges revealed how the system could help Faith Sanctuary. “I have a lot of experience as a touring front-of-house mixer, and I understand the science behind RoomMatch, which is totally valid, and I wanted to experience it myself,” he explains. “Faith Sanctuary isn't your typical church — we have a seven-piece band and it can get pretty loud during services. I needed to hear RoomMatch in action, with a live band playing through it, not prerecorded tracks. It was a proof of concept for us, and RoomMatch did exactly what it said it would do: the clarity was there even at high SPL.”
Westbury National installed a Bose system consisting of three hangs of four RoomMatch enclosures each, with four RoomMatch RMS215 subwoofers flown above the center array. Three more RMS218 subs are mounted underneath the stage; six more RoomMatch enclosures provide under-balcony coverage, and two more are used as choir fills. Nine networked PowerMatch PM8500N amplifiers power the entire system.
Brock McGinnis, Audio+Visual Solutions Division Sales Manager for Westbury National, remarks, “Bose has been a terrific partner on the Faith Sanctuary project. Their engineering team and tools have been wonderful to work with and, of course, the RoomMatch arrays sound amazing. Westbury National takes a lot of pride in our ability to provide great systems for great customers, and Bose helped us do just that for Pastor McKenzie and his team.”
When the first service after the system was installed took place, both McKenzie and Reynolds say it changed everything for the church. “We are extremely happy with how the sound has turned out,” says McKenzie. “Every word is completely intelligible, and the music is clear and powerful.”
Reynolds agrees: “We've found the optimum dB level for the room and it's been fantastic ever since,” he says. “Everyone loves the way we sound now.”
