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I recently had the opportunity to assist a local contractor in
the final calibration of a line array system for a reverberant Catholic
monastery.
A small section of rural southern Indiana has a dense Roman Catholic
population of predominantly German descent. A number of traditional
church buildings dot the landscape - most of which are very old
and very reverberant. Buddy Ward is the local sound expert (a long
time TEF user). He also owns and operates a frill-line music store
in the area. Buddy never misses an opportunity to demonstrate to
the locals that speech intelligibility can exist in a structure
designed for traditional music and worship. He has become somewhat
of a “line array evangelist” who can boast of some truly
remark able results in these traditional structures.
| The St. Meinrad monastery is a beautiful structure that
is over 100 years old. Preservation of the aesthetics of the
environment was a key part of the project. |
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The space we were working in has an RT in excess of 6 seconds at
2 kHz. The new sound system consists of four Intellivox line arrays
placed at strategic locations throughout the room. While the ears
are a wonderful tool for aiming such systems, they grow tired with
use and cannot document the performance of the system. We augmented
the listening process with %Alcons measurements performed on a Goldline
TEF2O. The measurements clearly showed when we were in the main
lobe of the line array (Figures 2-4), as evidenced by improved %Alcons,
a shorter Early-Decay Time (EDT) and improved direct-to-reverberant
ratio (ED-ER). This was indeed a “text book” case that
supported what we feel we understand about speech intelligibility.
Fig. I - The diagram shows the mic positions
used for each %Alcons
measurement made in the visitor’s gallery.
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