Established in 1861 and one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s first Jewish organizations, Temple Emanu-El describes itself as “a vibrant, musical and diverse reform community offering meaningful worship services, lively holiday celebrations, and inclusive and affirming life-cycle events”.
Temple Emanu-El’s current building, dedicated in 1948, includes the “Temple House” social hall. Temple House activities include worship service overflow, “Rock Shabbat” services, wedding receptions and a variety of other events.
In the past, the Temple House suffered from poor acoustics and an aging sound system. Contractor Joe Orlando of Commercial Media Systems in Atwater, California, says the shoe-box shaped room had a half-oak floor, hard walls and stucco ceiling. Its reverb time was over two seconds and “you couldn’t understand a conversation from three feet away!”
Orlando installed Perform Acoustics panels on the walls and ceiling to reduce the reverberation. And, to replace the old sound system and provide high-quality, intelligible sound throughout the space, he installed Community’s ENTASYS 220 Column Line Array loudspeakers and VLF208LV subwoofers at each side of the Temple House stage.
“This is a multi-purpose space,” said Orlando. “I needed a loudspeaker system that would sound great for music and provide intelligible voice all the way to the back of the room while still meeting the Temple’s budget. I knew the ENTASYS could do that. “And,” he added, “Community’s VLF208LV subs are great for the Temple House musical services and special events.”
Orlando powered the system with QSC amplifiers and used a Symetrix Radius DSP system. The sound system is highly flexible. It can be operated in “auto mode” with a single volume control on the wall, or it can be controlled from an iPAD via a Wi-Fi router. For larger events, like the Rock Shabbat services, the Temple plugs a Presonus mixer into a floor box in the center of the room.
“The Temple is very happy with the system,” said Orlando. “The rabbi loves the intelligibility, there are no feedback issues, and the system sounds great!”
