Danley brings clarity to Cathedral Church
- Details
The church’s music programme has earned accolades, and includes a modern music ensemble for its last service on Sunday. Georgia-based AV design and integration firm, dB Integrations, recently remedied Cathedral Church's sonic woes with a single Danley GH-60 Genesis Horn loudspeaker, two Danley SM-60s for side-fill, a Danley SBH-20 column loudspeaker for choir-fill, and a Danley TH-118 subwoofer.
In addition to delivering impactful, highly-intelligible music and speech reinforcement, the new Danley system performs without taking away from Cathedral Church's impressive architecture, woodwork, and stained glass.
"The church was getting complaints about the poor sound reinforcement on pretty much a daily basis," explains Ronnie Stanford, director of sales and marketing at dB Integrations. "They were contending with column loudspeakers that had been installed a few years ago on either side of the chancel, slightly behind the pulpit. They couldn't reach 90 feet to the back of the room.
“Compounding the pattern mismatch, gain-before-feedback was terrible. They really couldn't make the pastor any louder. Their modern service includes ensembles, such as acoustic guitar, cello, and djembe, and the musicians were actually positioned in front of the loudspeakers. It was impossible to get their open-mic volume where it needed to be without feedback."
dB Integrations designed a simple system: a single Danley GH-60 Genesis Horn covers almost everything. The GH-60 is designed with several of Danley's patented technologies so that its phase-coherent, point-source audio falls off appropriately with distance and angle so that seats near and far receive the same SPL.
"The pattern of the Danley GH-60 and the requirements at Cathedral Church are identical," Stanford says. "We provided a demo for the church officials with a GH-60 on a Genie lift. They loved the clean sound, which extended all the way to the back of the room, but we also instructed them to pay attention to how quiet it was behind the GH-60."
The four-foot tall Danley GH-60 is flown at 35ft, just below an impressive stained-glass window. It's custom-painted to match the wall, minimizing the aesthetic impact. The two Danley SM-60s tuck into the corners of the room and practically vanish. The SM-60s cover the 30 or so seats on each side that the GH-60 misses.
To fill out the entire frequency spectrum, dB Integrations installed a Danley TH-118 subwoofer at the peak of the roof - 60ft up - and in the centre of the room. From that location, its arrival time works well with the GH-60 and covers all the pews with equal low-frequency SPL.
Crown amplifiers power the system, and a BiAmp Nexia SP system provides input conditioning, routing logic, and modest loudspeaker conditioning. A new Allen & Heath dLive DM64 digital console allows the church to handle complicated services or events, and its simple iPad remote control provides a basic interface for simpler scenarios. The console is mounted in a custom road case from Georgia Case.
(Jim Evans)
