A recent system upgrade project for the sanctuary at Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto, performed by the integration department of Sherwood, is headed by SBH-Series loudspeakers from Danley Sound Labs.
The history of the church dates back to 1820, and it has been in its current building across the street from the University of Toronto since 1909. Unfortunately, the venue’s previous sound reinforcement system plagued by poor intelligibility, largely due to a renovation that radically changed the acoustic nature.
“We started work on Knox Presbyterian’s troublesome sanctuary after completing several other projects that they were really happy with in other areas of their facility,” explains Craig Ritchie, project manager at Sherwood. “They had some 30-plus year-old loudspeakers way up in the ceiling that were firing above the seating – just energizing the room, really. During the previous year, they had rented a ground-stack PA, but that came with its own issues.”
Ritchie and his colleagues at Sherwood had installed several Danley systems and invited the decisionmakers at Knox Presbyterian to listen to another system that Ritchie had designed at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Kitchener. Although Ritchie arranged the meeting and demo, no one from Sherwood attended so that the members of the two churches could speak freely.
“Danley technology has provided great solutions for us, especially in difficult churches,” he notes. “We’re able to cover exactly the area that needs coverage and nothing else.”
The sanctuary now has a Danley SBH10 loudspeaker flown directly above the pulpit to cover the main seating area, with an SBH20 halfway into the room, on delay, covering the rear-located balcony. A pair of Danley Nano loudspeakers provide fill to either side of the pulpit. A four-channel Danley DNA 10k4 Pro amplifier with integrated DSP delivers audio power to the loudspeakers, and it proved to provide a reasonable starting point for the modest system tuning that finished the job. The rest of the church’s sound reinforcement system was in good shape, and the Sherwood technicians were able to reuse existing wire runs.
“The church is thrilled,” Ritchie concludes. “They have modern, upbeat services and serve a diverse mix of ages. Spoken word fills the bulk of their services, and now, as promised, it is wonderfully intelligible. They hadn’t really expected the musicality of the system to improve since they were mainly worried about intelligibility, so they were pleasantly surprised to hear how alive and musical the guitar and grand piano sound reinforced through the new Danley system.”
