The 450-plus capacity worship sanctuary of St. Mark’s Church, located in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square neighborhood and considered by many as one of the best concert venues in the city, was recently outfitted with a new sound reinforcement system utilizing Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5 digitally steerable loudspeakers in a design by Joe DiSabatino, lead design engineer at JD Sound & Video.
The sanctuary nave is quite large, with the Decorated Gothic style of the church, replete with vaulted ceilings, solid wood pews and stone masonry throughout, contributed to an unsatisfactory reverberation time of three seconds. Church staff reached out to DiSabatino to provide the new design, and he in turn partnered with local acoustical engineer Hadi Sumoro of HX Audio Lab to model the acoustics using EASE to design the system and SysTune to tune and optimize. Additionally, JD Sound & Video contacted Renkus Heinz’s regional manufacturer representatives at Audio Associates to assist with the installation.
“We have an extensive history working with Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers, and the EASE model showed great performance in the nave,” says DiSabatino. “Their beam steering arrays eliminated the need for delay speakers which would have required mounting to columns, something the church would not approve.”
JD Sound & Video installed IC Live Gen5 ICL-F-DUAL-RN arrays to improve speech intelligibility and provide more even front-to-back coverage. IC Live Gen5 arrays use digital beam steering technology with individual driver control that in turn enhances vertical pattern control to result in the higher degree of intelligibility in reverberant spaces.
Renkus-Heinz RHAON II System Manager software lets the installer define the opening angles for as many as eight sonic beams from each ICL-F-DUAL-RN array module and aim them up or down. Meanwhile, the slim enclosure remains inconspicuous. For St. Mark’s installation, an artist custom-painted the cabinets in a complimentary stone motif to help them further blend into the space.
Further, six CX41 compact loudspeakers are “tucked away” near the pulpit and choir areas, acting as monitors for liturgical services. The church staff states that it is pleased with the final result.
“We’ll continue using IC Live for challenging acoustic environments like St. Mark’s,” concludes DiSabatino. “The beam steering is second to none for reverberant spaces.”
