Temple Beth El Balances Technology With Tradition

In With The Old... And The New

Located in the historic East Side neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, Temple Beth El has served the city's Jewish community since 1849, when a small group known as the "Sons of Israel" gathered for daily services. Today, the Temple's founders would be surprised - to say the least - at their synagogue's new, modern sound reinforcement system featuring a digital head-end and automation devices.

The team developing the new system included Foxboro, MA-based MaGuire Group, mechanical consultant for the Temple, who in turn brought in A/V consultant Ralph Gibson of New Hartford (CT)-based Gibson & Associates, as well as Eric Leineke of North Haven (CT)-based HB Communications, who served as A/V project manager.

A perspective of the sanctuary at Temple Beth El, a challenging acoustical environment.

Temple Beth El contains a main sanctuary flanked by eight classrooms with moving walls. These classrooms, when opened, can accommodate extra seating for special events and High Holy Days for up to 2,000 worshippers. At the front of the sanctuary is the Bema, the Ark for storage of the Torah, and a choir loft directly behind and above. In addition to services, Beth El is home to celebrations of weddings, confirmations, remembrances, High Holy Days, B'nei Mitzvah and is also a concert venue, hosting traditional and contemporary Jewish musical events. Gibson and HB Communications

Dual Yamaha 01V digital mixers offering plenty of flexibility for diverse needs at the temple.

Tech Center designed the system around a main and distributed PA, two Yamaha 01V digital mixing consoles and an AMX Axcent 3 control system with AXD-CA10 10.4-in. color active touch panel. This color active-matrix LCD panel provides interactive graphic images that respond to the user's touch.

"The sound system had to be transparent, and it had to be multi-purpose," explains Leineke. "The staff also wanted a system that was easy to operate and would be consistent. Those needs played a big influence on equipment choices The AMX has various services imprinted in the memory-Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, funeral and the like. It also gives the user a visual on the touch screen, so it's very easy to operate. When one of the staff members selects a service, the 01Vs' recall functions-mic inputs, levels, EQ-work in tandem and snap to a pre-selected setting, or 'scene.' We even took precautions, for example, the Rabbi's and Cantor's mics are on manual override, and all scenes can be re-adjusted by re-pushing the appropriate AMX button.

One of the AMX control screens devised for easy system configuration and operation.

The Yamaha 01V includes 24 full-featured channels, two stereo effect returns, six busses, six aux sends plus direct outputs on channels 1-16, moving faders and automation functions. Primary input channels (1-16) each offer a 4-band parametric EQ, limiter/ compressor/gate plus a 250 ms delay line. The 01V can store and instantly recall all mixer settings in 99 on-board snapshot memories, allowing the user to return at any time to a previous mix.

Components are housed in one 40-space rack and two 27-space racks from Middle Atlantic Products. The 40-space unit, installed in the choir loft, contains all amplifiers and speaker processing equipment and fed by dedicated 100 Amp/120 VAC service.

The 01V consoles are stored in one of the 27-space units and ride on sliding shelves for easy access. The second 27-space rack houses playback equipment consisting of a Panasonic SV-3800 DAT, Marantz PMD320 CD, Marantz PMD500 cassette and four Shure DFRII EQ units for equalization and feedback suppression. Other control components in the system include an FSR lectern volume control, voltage controlled amplifier and FSR power sequence system, a line distribution amplifier, ST-MMX3 mic mixer modules and ST-MPA2 phantom power module from Radio Design Labs.