Needham, MA (October 5, 2012)—St. Joseph Parish has been part of Needham, MA for nearly 120 years, with its current home built in 1966. The space recently underwent an audio system upgrade provided by Boston Light and Sound.
“It’s a rectangular space with a flat ceiling and lots of right angles,” explains Zeke Zola, install manager at Boston Light and Sound. The walls are all brick and there’s minimal acoustical dampening other than carpeting in the aisles. So it’s a rather reverberant space, and they’ve always struggled with intelligibility and coverage.”
The church’s sound system had evolved in piecemeal fashion over several years, and included a distributed system along the walls. “They had no loudspeakers at the front of the room, but three or four along the side walls, and they were not time-aligned,” says Zola. “So you were getting the sound from the front, mixed with the sounds from two or three different loudspeakers, depending on where you were sitting, and the result was just kind of unnatural and echo-y, with no real directionality.”
To fix the issue, Renkus Heinz Iconyx IC16-R-II columns were mounted on either side of the proscenium covers the entire sanctuary. “Using the Iconyx, we can control the beam for very narrow coverage, and minimize the amount of reflected sound from the ceiling and back wall.” Other additions include wired Clock Audio mics flown overhead to pick up the choir, while Shure wired and RF microphones cover the podium and stage. The mics feed a Symetrix 780 Automixer, connected directly to the Iconyx systems.
Renkus-Heinz
www.renkus-heinz.com
