Audio Design Specialists of Madison, WI, recently deployed a new sound reinforcement system featuring Tannoy V series loudspeakers at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Franklin, Wisconsin.

The recently built church features a modern liturgical design pioneered by Excel Engineering. The design is based on the traditional cruciform plan and provides a traditional decor but with better viewing angles. The result is a shorter and wider nave, flanked by wider transepts, with a radial seating plan that flows from the nave through the transepts, and with a thrust platform at the center of the radial seating. Most surfaces remain hard to provide an acoustical environment suitable for organ, and the traditional look is retained via stained glass windows, exposed arches, ornate millwork, etc.

The challenge for the sound system designer is how to provide uniform coverage to the radial seating geometry that mimics that of a modern non-litergical church, but in a traditional aesthetic environment were there is no place to hide them.

Audio Design Specialists was up to the challenge at St. Paul’s. They designed a system that included 8 Tannoy V12s in an arc concentric about the thrust platform for sources on the platform, and a separate pair of V12s radiating from the rear right side, where the choir risers are located, to provide independent reinforcement of the choir. The narthex is covered by 4 Tannoy V6s that are time delayed relative to the precedence units in the arc.

Since there was no way to hide the 8 precedence units, Audio Design Specialists adopted the approach of making them an accent by mating them with a ring of rolled 2” x 4” steel tubing. The ring approach concealed all of the loudspeaker cable and avoided the cost and aesthetic problems of individual rigging. The reaction to the ring approach has been universally positive, not only by the congregation, but by other architects as well.