PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, WI – Two older churches here – St. Gabriel's and St. John's – shared a common problem. They both had large, reverberant spaces, which caused intelligibility issues, and both hired Lifeline Audio Video Technologies for a solution, which came in the form of SLS Audio's LS6593V2 column line arrays.
"Both churches have very high ceilings and fairly reverberant rooms," said Mike Mair, vice president of Lifeline AV. "Those were contributing factors in choosing the SLS speakers. We knew we needed line array technology and needed even dispersion of sound at even SPL levels from front to back. The SLS speakers accomplished this very, very well. They provided very consistent sound, and that's what we needed."
As with many churches, there was some initial concern about how the sound would travel to the back of the rooms. Would attendees in the back not be able to hear as well as those in the front? And would the people sitting in front be bombarded with too much sound?
Thanks to the design of Lifeline AV's Scott Wright and the smooth ribbon drivers of the SLS Audio speakers, this wasn't an issue at all.
"Due to the dispersion patterns of the LS6593s, the sound was extremely consistent from front to back," Mair said. "There was very little deviation in SPL level and the intelligibility was absolutely wonderful.
"The other tremendous benefit to these speakers was the gain before feedback we were able to obtain was really significant," Mair said. "We tested it with a famous, inexpensive lapel microphone in St. Johns. We had a technician put it on to see how much it was going to feedback. But, the SLS ribbons didn't feedback at all despite the fact that he walked right in front of the speakers with the gain turned up. It wouldn't feedback. That is a significant benefit of the ribbon drivers."
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