- combination of six D.A.S. Audio Aero 28A 2-way, self-powered, bi-amplified line array elements supplemented by a single CA-215A mono-amplified arrayable subwoofer make up the new system in the church.FORT COLLINS, CO-In its quest to improve the sound quality parishioners experience each week during services, Saint Joseph Catholic Parish, one of the historic churches of the Fort Collins, CO area, recently upgraded its sound reinforcement system. The new system was designed and installed by Loveland, CO-based DB Production Services. DB Production Services installed the church's prior sound system, which was used successfully for almost 20 years before being re-deployed to the adjacent Saint Joseph School.
- According to Dan Bashor, president and CEO of DB Production Services, "For this upgrade, we were asked to create a system that could operate unattended, but offered the flexibility to adapt to different types of services. Speech intelligibility and unattended operation were key considerations of this project. For aesthetic reasons, we didn't want to hang delay speakers of any kind in the building and we only had one hang point. It was important that the system provide coverage over a very long, reverberant field, including the balcony at the rear, yet have the ability to extend to the far sides."
- For this project, Bashor determined a combination of six D.A.S. Audio Aero 28A 2-way, self-powered, bi-amplified line array elements supplemented by a single CA-215A mono-amplified arrayable subwoofer made the ideal system.
- The loudspeaker array's single, centralized hang point posed an additional challenge for Bashor. "We couldn't let the cluster extend too far down and disturb the visual appearance of the canopy over the altar," said Bashor. "By modeling the room using EASE Focus, we managed to maximize the evenness of the sound coverage while gaining enough arc in the cluster so that it wouldn't obstruct the view of the altar. The Aero 28A has a 120-degree dispersion pattern, so we had plenty of coverage on the sides and more than enough throw to the rear of the space."
As an unattended system, there is no front of house. Instead, Bashor outfitted the church with a Yamaha LS9-16 digital console with 16-mic/line inputs and 32 total channels. The house mix is fed directly from the console to the loudspeakers. Since the console has both parametric and graphic EQ, it handles all signal processing tasks.
"Using the LS9-16, we created a number of templates that take advantage of the console's equalization capabilities," said Bashor. "These enable the system to adapt to different types of events."
