PORTLAND, OR — Trinity Episcopal Cathedral’s new automated sound system includes Tannoy’s QFlex array. The system for the 1,000-capacity sanctuary was chosen for coverage, intelligibility and ease of use, with head sexton, Kimberly Sherwood calling it “a very self-sufficient system” and going so far as to dub it “Priest-proof.”
More details from Tannoy (www.tcgroup-americas.com):
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral traces its roots to the mid-1840s, when immigrants began coming to the Portland area in strength from the Oregon Trail. Throughout their history, service has been an important component of their ministry; a preoccupation reflected by their active role in the establishment of Portland’s Good Samaritan Hospital in the late Nineteenth century and their ongoing community outreach efforts today. “We are an open and welcoming congregation,” says Sherwood, explaining that the church welcomes all people, rich and poor, regardless of their faith, sexual preference, or ethnicity. “It’s an ethic built on the idea of being good servants,” she adds.
Portland, Oregon based A/V systems integration contractor Delta AV also strive to serve, says senior consultant/design engineer and company founder, Steve Jellerson. “We do not use a product because it’s the latest and the greatest. We pick product based on the client’s needs and we carry pretty much every speaker manufacturer there is, so when we choose a product it’s a choice based on its specific application in that space.”
In his nearly 33 years in pro audio, Jellerson has roughly 1000 church installs under his belt and describes Tannoy as one of Delta A/V’s ‘go to’ solutions for a variety of applications. “Frankly, it’s the one we go to when the client says we want better and we’ve got money. I think I’ve used most of their products at some point.”
The Trinity design/build, however, was Jellerson’s first experience with Tannoy’s QFlex. Being unfamiliar with the product the choice was a leap of faith, he says – albeit one based on Tannoy’s reputation and the similarities between their approach to creating audio solutions and Delta AV’s in implementing them. “They build product that works and they make them application appropriate. If it didn’t work, we’d have pulled it out at our own expense and started over.”
In all, the project took a year and a half to complete, Sherwood says, including fundraising, design and build. The project finished out in February 2011. In her role as Head Sexton Sherwood functions as Trinity’s facilities manager – “Keeping everything functioning as far as the non liturgical side of the church business goes,” as she puts it – and worked closely with Jellerson and Delta AV project manager, Michael Sanders, on the project.
As is often the case in house of worship installs, the primary challenges at Trinity were a matter of remaining conscious of the client’s aesthetic considerations while overcoming the problems of a highly reverberant space. “It’s literally an organ chamber,” Jellerson says. And, in fact, Trinity Episcopal houses a world famous Rosales organ, built specifically for the church and installed during a comprehensive renovation of the nave and sanctuary in the 1980s. “It’s roughly a 6 second RT, so the organ and the choir sound gorgeous, they don’t even mic them.”
While providing a system that was easy to operate was a key component of the design/build, intelligible reinforcement of speech was the number one criteria. To serve Trinity’s needs, Delta AV’s design called for one QFlex 40 to be installed dead centre on the sanctuary’s front arch, with the bottom of the array approximately 28 feet in the air. In this case, even as compact as QFlex is, Jellerson says, getting the system mounted was still a challenge. “It was a difficult church to put the system in. We couldn’t use a lift so they had to build scaffolding to get the system in, but it worked.”
Control of the system is managed exclusively via a wireless AMX touch screen. Post install, Jellerson explains, it was actually necessary to actually limit the amount of control the client had even further than they’d initially intended to. “We started out giving them too much control, so we ended up taking all that control away; now they just have volume controls that go plus or minus 3dB.”
The system also incorporates Biamp DSP and Crown amps driving a pair of Tannoy i9s mounted behind pillars to the left and right of the altar. “But we didn’t use any of the DSP filters in the Biamp for the main array, we’re just using the QFlex filters,” Jellerson says.
The i9s are used as choir monitors, but primarily for playback of recordings of the 60-person ensemble’s rehearsals and concerts, which are recorded using a single Audio-Technica stereo recording microphone also provided by Delta AV. The i9s were another of the few Tannoy products Jellerson had yet to specify prior this project. “I hadn’t heard them and I was pleasantly surprised that they sounded good with full range music. I chose them because of their coverage pattern and their narrow vertical. They have to throw quite a ways to the choir.”
While the previous system, a mix of long and short throw horns, had worked reasonably well, it never provided smooth coverage front to back. “That’s where the QFlex stands out,” Jellerson says. “It’s a long seating area, approximately 75 feet, and it stays within a dB front to back.”
To achieve that, the church took a novel approach to tuning the system. “They stopped the Sunday service with a full house and had people on every microphone – five wireless, a podium and a pulpit mic, all Audio-Technica 4000 series – and had them speak one at a time,” Jellerson says. “They told everyone to stay seated unless they could hear perfectly. We went through every microphone and we didn’t move on until we had everything the way they wanted it. That’s an unusual way to sound check. I’ve never seen a church do that before, but it worked and we got everybody standing.”
While unusual, Sherwood feels it was a necessary exercise. “We have five priests every Sunday and they all have their own wireless microphones and there’s a lot of fine tuning to get everyone’s just right. We could have tested it all week long, but as soon as you put people in the cathedral the sound changes, so we had to do it that way.”
The result speaks for itself. “It’s worked out so well. The choir had never been able to hear themselves sing before. Now they can record and hear how they sound and that is just a joy for them. And I’m very happy with the main speakers. I’m amazed at how small they are and how much power they have.”
