Case StudY
St Bridget’s Church, West Kirby
St Bridget’s Parish Church serves the small town of West Kirby, on the Dee estuary. The Church was founded by Christian Vikings from Ireland and has served the local community for more than a thousand years.
Looking to improve the performance of the installed sound system the Church contacted Kirkpatrick Sound Engineering, renowned church specialist supplier, to improve upon the installed sound system, made up of a collection of components added to over a number of years and fast becoming unreliable and unfit for purpose.
Roy Kirkpatrick, Director for Kirkpatrick Sound Engineering, comments, “we designed an outline proposal for the new sound system at St Bridget’s Parish Church and offered to demonstrate the performance of the proposed solutions, with a number of different loudspeaker choices, to allow church members to hear for themselves the differences between the proposed solutions”.
Active Audio R100 one metre high column loudspeakers were chosen to provide audio coverage for the Church’s Nave. The unique rigging system of the R100’s allows them to be vertically mounted very closely to the wall on which they are fitted whilst the acoustic properties provide optimum coverage over a nominal range of twenty metres, which makes them perfect for use in church buildings.
Audac Kydo column loudspeakers were used to provide coverage in the choir and chapel areas, mounted horizontally and high up, within the eaves of the church roof to provide natural sounding coverage in these areas.
Energy-Star compliant Audac EPA amplifiers were installed to provide audio output to the Active Audio and Audac column loudspeakers. The amplifiers are convection cooled, offering almost silent operation, and in addition to their low power consumption in standby mode, were chosen for their clean, low-distortion acoustic properties.
In addition to fixed position installed microphones Kirkpatrick Sound Engineering also opted to provide a four-channel wireless microphone system, choosing the MiPRO ACT 7 system. For the fixed position microphones, Electrovoice Polar gooseneck microphones were used.
“We like the MiPRO Act 7 system, it provides truly natural sound, excellent coverage and professional performance and we chose to use the EV Polar goosenecks as they allow us to select the polar pickup pattern of the microphone, once installed, essentially allowing us to fine-tune the audio-acoustic properties of the system really easily”, comments Kirkpatrick.
The microphones are connected to a Shure automatic microphone mixer, with the output connected to the Church’s main mixer, an Allen & Heath ZED-14 compact audio mixer. An Apart PC1000R MK2 CD/SD/USB player, used to provide background music playback during services, completes the audio line-up of the newly installed sound system.
“This project has been achieved with the help and assistance of the technical support team at Commercial Audio Solutions who provided help with the system design and product demonstrations.The system installed at St Bridget,s West Kirby, is one of a number of systems installed churches in the arear, our aim is always to provide optimum solutions, within available budgets, without compromising on audio quality and performance”, concludes Kirkpatrick.
Equiptment List: x2 Active Audio R100 Column Loudspeaker
Further information
Further information
Commercial Audio Solutions
From their base in the Peak District of Derbyshire, Commercial Audio distributes professional audio products to all corners of the UK and overseas, holding stock of many of the world’s most prestigious brands, including Bosch, Sennheiser, JBL, Yamaha, RCF and Audio Technica.
With over 40 years experience our aim is to offer customers the very best possible service. From the smallest background music system to huge stadium venues, we can supply.
Kirkpatrick Sound Engineering
Kirkpatrick sound engineering supply and install professional audio equipment and sound systems either from main agents or directly from the manufacturer, using experience and expertise to help customers source the best equipment for their needs.
Located in Knutsford, Cheshire the company is owned by Roy D. Kirkpatrick, MInstSCE who has been designing and installing sound systems for more than forty years.