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Iconyx Wins Over A Skeptical Congregation In Montreal
APRIL 2008 – CANADA – A pair of Renkus-Heinz ICONYX IC32 Digitally Steerable Array loudspeakers has achieved what until recently seemed an impossible solution at the cavernous St. Cunégonde church, one of Montreal’s hidden treasures.
The embossed stone church, built in 1906 and painstakingly restored in 1984 by a Catholic Korean community under the supervision of architect Claude Beaulieu, suffered poor intelligibility from a series of full-range two-way loudspeakers mounted on the side walls at a height of 15 feet. In this location, the high frequencies were projected above the listeners directly onto hard reflective surfaces, and their low frequency energy was completely uncontrolled, further degrading speech intelligibility.
In 2006 the congregation of St. Cunégonde contacted SISCOM of Montréal for advice on improving the situation. With over a million cubic feet of internal volume enclosed by plaster, glass and other hard reflective surfaces, St. Cunégonde’s RT60 is at least 6 seconds.
As SISCOM explained to the church building committee, “with these difficult conditions for speech, care must be taken to concentrate the audio energy of the sound system on the assembly in the nave…good speech intelligibility can be obtained only by reducing to a minimum the effect of the reverberant field.”
Also desperately in need of improvement was the system’s front end which included a mixture of portable and DJ equipment – some of which SISCOM adapted to provide monitoring for the choir loft and occasional soloists.
The main feature of SISCOM’s design was a pair of ICONYX IC 32 Digital Controlled Arrays from Renkus-Heinz. SISCOM has installed these digitally controlled columns at the largest churches in Canada, bringing intelligible speech and song to the Basilica of Notre Dame at Cap de la Madeleine on the banks of the St. Lawrence river near Trois Riviéres as well as the even larger Oratoire-St. Joseph du Mont Royal in Montréal. Similar in design to St. Cunégonde but even larger, this basilica is surpassed in size only by St. Peter’s in the Vatican.
SISCOM’s Jean Giroux points out that “it was not easy to sell such an expensive and high-tech system to a community like this one, especially 24 months after they spent tens of thousands of dollars on a disco-type system that was completely ineffective. It took patience, detailed explanations, years of experience with intelligibility problems, and providing many examples to prove our claims.”
“Koreans are a very polite and respectful people,” he points out. “The parish committee seeks as far as possible to gain unanimity of all parishioners before taking an important decision.”
Concerned at the initial cost of SISCOM’s proposal and skeptical that two slender ICONYX columns could out-perform the massive night-club-style system, the parish committee and their pastor, Father Pierre Sung, visited the Oratoire-St. Joseph.
It convinced them Iconyx technology would solve their problems and allow the entire congregation to participate fully in worship services. SISCOM supported their conviction by extending their normal two-year guarantee to three years and by guaranteeing the performance and intelligibility of the ICONYX system, not simply the parts and labor they provided.
The two IC32 columns installed at St. Cunégonde were assembled on site from sets of four IC8 array modules. Each module includes eight high performance four-inch coaxial loudspeakers. Each of these is driven by its own high-current pure digital amplifier and controlled by a dedicated DSP processor that implements FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filters. Horizontal coverage is a wide 140° – vertical coverage is determined in BeamWare software.
An IC32 can produce beams as narrow as 5° vertically, and these can be steered up to 30° above or below horizontal. Up to 16 separate beams can be produced from a single IC32 array, giving the system designer a wide range of options for matching the array’s coverage to the actual geometry of the listening area. An IC32 controls acoustic energy above 175 Hz and can produce up to 96 dB SPL over distances of up to 300 feet.
At St. Cunégonde, like SISCOM’s other Iconyx installations in buildings of historical and religious significance, the near-invisibility of the six-inch-wide ICONYX columns and ability to mount flat to the walls are key aesthetic benefits. SISCOM mounted the IC32s on specially-built and colour-matched pedestals the make the arrays effectively ‘disappear’ into the wall.
To ensure simple and seamless operation, SISCOM specified sophisticated front end electronics including a Biamp Nexia CS digital mixer and multi-processor with the ability to handle multiple vocal microphones as well as the choir and organ. Biamp’s VS8 control panel allows the church staff to select from a number of pre-programmed system configurations, while behind the scenes the DSP power of the Nexia unit takes care of the essential mixing and signal processing functions. The finishing touch was provided by new microphones from Audio-Technica.
From start to finish, St. Cunégonde’s signal chain is now state of the art. Thanks to SISCOM’s forward-looking design and meticulous installation, this church now has audio technology that helps the impressive structure serve its intended function and purpose.
Jena Giroux supervised the entire project for SISCOM and made personal visits to St. Cunégonde to check that everything was working properly. “The parishioners are happy with the system and the intelligibility that it provides,” Giroux reports. “In fact, they recommended SISCOM for a new Korean Protestant church in Montreal.”
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