Built in the late 1800s, the Liebfrauenkirche (or Church of Our Lady) in Zürich, Switzerland, is designed in the style of an early Christian basilica with nearly every surface covered with mosaics and frescoes of biblical figures and events, resulting in reverberation challenges that were recently addressed with the installation of beam-steering arrays from Renkus-Heinz.
Church staff contacted Urs Habegger, CEO of effekte.ch AG, to help solve the issue, specifically to enhance speech intelligibility, working together with Chris Steiger, CEO of promedias AG, an audio and video solutions provider in Switzerland.
“As we’ve encountered in many other churches, Liebfrauenkirche had very long reverberation times in its nave. Given all the spectacular artwork, there were limited options for where we could mount loudspeakers,” says Steiger. “That’s why the only solution for this scenario was a beam-steered loudspeaker system from Renkus-Heinz.”
effekte.ch AG installed and commissioned four ICC24/3 digitally steerable loudspeakers incorporating three-inch, full-range drivers and multi-channel amplifiers, combined with the company’s beam-steering technology to better focus sound where’s it’s needed and away from where it’s not. In addition, the narrow cabinet is designed to minimize aesthetic impact.
“Our goal with every job is to meet or exceed the client’s expectations, and I think we were very successful in achieving our goal with Liebfrauenkirche,” notes Habegger. “The church is a work of art; it’s breathtaking inside. Thanks to Renkus-Heinz, the church congregation can hear the liturgy clearly while basking in the visual grandeur.”
