without any sound absorption , may sound great for choirs and pipe organs , but they wreak havoc on speech intelligibility and old speaker systems .
“ It ’ s really the spoken word that people could not hear . So , there was talk that we ’ d need to put a new system in and it would be expensive ,” begins Steve Shaw , an honorary assistant at St . Paul ’ s who served as the church ’ s project coordinator , and who also had a distinguished career as an engineer and planner . “ But what precipitated the action , really , is when we put in big new fans , it was discovered that the wiring was very inadequate . In fact , when that was looked into , it was really decided that as a matter of some urgency , we needed to rewire the church – some of it hadn ’ t been done for 100 years .”
This was in 2018 , and somewhat ominously , just months later , on April 15 , 2019 , millions would watch on live television as the iconic Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral burned . The likely cause of that devastating fire , which collapsed the spire and did untold damage , was an electrical fault .
And so , as planning for a major electrical and lighting upgrade began at St . Paul ’ s , Shaw recalls , “ We were saying , ‘ Well , if we ’ re going to do this and put new conduit in and cabling and so on , let ’ s do the sound system as well .’”
The pressing and principle need of any new speaker system would be to greatly improve speech intelligibility . Also , the church wished for more control over the sound ’ s location ; something that would enable them to direct it to just specific areas of the church . And since they were now looking to improve the audio , the church also thought , why not add some video screens to share bulletins and cameras to record and stream services ? Like we said , things snowballed .
“ And so , the initial design was expanded significantly over the months and we obviously put in a much bigger front of house , much bigger equipment , and we hadn ’ t even thought of a post-production room , but that became part of the project ,” adds Shaw . “ So , what we ’ ve ended up with is much more than we thought we ’ d start with .”
As far as sound goes , the project began with an acoustical report from Ottawa-based Swallow Acoustic Consultants , which was completed in November 2017 . That report , not very surprisingly , identified a lot of reverb in the space .
“ According to the report , there is an average reverberation time of 3.4 seconds in the sanctuary based on measurement taken in 34 locations ,” states Christian Bechard , principle at Novita Techne , who ’ s firm was engaged as the AV consultants after the acoustical report was completed . “ That means that when I am speaking in the space , even if I am annunciating clearly , by the time I get the third word in my sentence , none of it is intelligible anymore . In the lower frequencies the acoustical measurements logged up to nine seconds of delay at 63Hz . So that made providing a more intelligible system very challenging .”
After Novita ’ s initial site visit in December 2018 and a second in August 2019 , Bechard presented the church with an AV program document identifying a number of design goals . The first of these goals concerned aesthetics , because any new system had to be consistent with the historic look and character of the building . Number two was infrastructure , meaning they needed a robust AV infrastructure to accommodate future video elements in a phased approach ( though that drawn out , phased approach to implementing video would be greatly sped up , as we ’ ll get to ). The third , though primary goal was , again , to greatly improve the intelligibility of the sound system for spoken word . As part of his due diligence , Bechard attended a couple services at St . Paul ’ s with his wife just to hear the space and old speaker system for himself .
The next goal was to provide for distinct speaker zones throughout the worship space . “ They have services in different parts of the sanctuary that require audio in that specific location , but not necessarily in the rest of the sanctuary . For example , the baptismal font is located at the north end of the sanctuary , opposite the chancel where the main speakers are located . When the celebrant is at the font baptizing a child , he uses a wireless microphone and it is important to have the sound emanating from that location rather than from the speakers at the front , so that the sound is coming from the same direction as the source . First , this helps to direct the parishioner ’ s attention to the back of the church , plus there is no confusion about where the action is happening as the parishioner ’ s eyes and their ears are telling them the same thing . For this reason , we included speakers at this location in the design ,” Bechard explains .
The last design goal was to provide monitoring at the high altar , and for the choir . “ We understood that the choir , seated in the pews at the chancel and celebrants at the high altar couldn ’ t hear when someone was using the gooseneck microphones located at the Eagle lectern , the prayer benches , or the main Podium . To resolve the problem , we updated all the gooseneck microphones , added a column array speaker facing the altar , and added new amplification for the exiting [ TOA ] pew-back speakers facing the choir , which hadn ’ t been used in recent years . We also updated and increased the number of wireless microphones , using the Shure ULXD systems with antenna distribution and insured that the wireless system met current regulatory standards .”
As well , the new system was to have two separate modes of operation including an automation mode and a live mode . In automation mode , a volunteer or caretaker could simply press some clearly-labelled preset buttons on a touch panel that corresponds with the type of service or event , such as for a small morning service on the west transept , or a full service using the entire space . The preset would then automatically configure the system , engaging EQ settings , turning on and routing the required microphones to the appropriate speakers needed for that service . For more complex services and events that require technicians , the live mode would be used to allow a more advanced level of control for live music and / or broadcast and recording of the service .
In the initial design stages , the church ’ s stated requirements for the new speaker system were focused on improving speech intelligibility , but over the lengthy duration of the project ’ s planning stages , the need for music reinforcement was identified by the church ’ s music and technical staff . “ When we were asked to provide extended low frequency
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