The Chapel of Saints Peter and Paul in Tyler, TX, has opened its doors after a lengthy construction project, rewarding this east Texas town with a brand-new 13,000-square-foot main building that includes a 650-seat sanctuary that is a beautiful, classically designed structure with a high peaked roof and plenty of ornate wood, marble, and glass.
“It’s a really impressive architectural design, and the acoustics are ideal for their choir and organ,” explains Jason Brantley, CEO of Longview, TX-based Sound Logic Integrations. “But it’s not so good for the band or for intelligibility.”
The Sound Logic crew was brought in to design the audio for the new building, opting for a system centered around Renkus-Heinz Iconyx digitally steerable array loudspeakers. A pair of IC16-R-II columns mounted on either side of the proscenium covers the entire room.
“We originally specified some acoustical treatment to cut down the reverberance a bit,” says Brantley. “But the budget for sound absorption was cut halfway through the project, and we ended up with about a quarter of the treatment we had planned for. That’s where the Iconyx really saved the day.”
Brantley adds that the ability to tightly focus the sound toward the seating areas, and away from walls, windows, and other reflective surfaces, was critical to the success of the audio system design.
“The band and the choir are not on stage—they’re in a choir pocket that’s stage left,” he notes. “The Iconyx enabled us to take the first beam and push it right past where the choir mic is hung, to eliminate any feedback issues. That kind of precision is something we could have only done with the Iconyx.”
