Sleek sound system for renovated Catholic Church: St James Tiverton

St James Catholic Church in Tiverton was undergoing massive renovation work when APi were called out to assess the space for a new sound system. The building had required attention for many years, and as part of an investment in the congregation from the local Diocese, the church and the attached Presbytery were gutted and redesigned, with only one wall of the original church building remaining. A hall was also added on one side, so that the building had the capacity to welcome community events.

Having a strong connection with other Catholic churches in the area, we had a good sense of what the church was looking for and had discussions with the priest to ensure that it was going to work for them. The solution needed to be hands-off, with minimal to no interaction with controls during services, due to the equipment being housed in a room behind the main church space.

As with many Catholic churches, the focus was on clear speech intelligibility that would give consistent coverage for the entire congregation, with no music playback requirement. A foyer needed to be covered, but with the ability to turn this space down. The hall needed a separate system that could be used as a standalone system or as an overflow, with both an audio and video feed from the main church.

With a budget of £20,000 – £25,000, we knew that we could use high-quality products to give the church a great-sounding, simple-to-use sound system, along with a large screen in the hall.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to designing and installing equipment in renovated buildings is liaising with the building contractor to ensure that we carry out work when we can access the areas we need to. Far too often, audio-visual equipment is an afterthought, meaning that it is too late to run cables before walls are boarded and plastered. Thankfully, this did not apply to this project, as we were brought on board before all the construction work had finished.

We measured the space and discussed the materials that were to be used to get a good idea of how reverberant it was going to be when completed. We put these into software, which allowed us to map speaker positions and see the expected coverage. This was to both reassure us and the client that the proposed solution would deliver the results we were striving to achieve.

The other challenge was making sure that the equipment was self-sufficient, as it was to be switched on and left during the service. Therefore, we had to pick products we knew would deliver high-quality results with no interaction over and over again.