| Untitled Document Tannoy QFlex bridges the gap between form and function at St. Theresa's
While it wasn't the express intention of the Federal Way, Washington parish to create a highly reverberant space, it was the natural extension of a comprehensive redesign and refit of the 500 person capacity house of worship. Happily, that is exactly the kind of space a Tannoy QFlex rig is purpose built for.
The key requirement for the overhaul was to create a delineated sacred worship space more befitting a Catholic Parish than the previous design had been. Although the space had originally been a reasonably dead sounding room, due to the nature of the ceiling's construction, any conversations taking place in the narthex tended to be overheard in the central area of the church itself. "What they had, was a big open connection between the nave and the narthex, which, over time, proved to be very distracting," explains John Faley, project manager on the build and assistant to architect, Kevin Broderick.
 To solve that issue, and to provide the congregation with a more elegant, fully enclosed nave, few surfaces were left untouched; various decorative elements were also added, and the church's individual chairs replaced with more traditional wooden pews. But while the end result of meeting the clients' aesthetic concerns resulted in a beautiful, decidedly more traditional, worship space, the means employed to do so created a bit of a design challenge. Namely, an RT of roughly 3 seconds?
Enter A/V and lighting designers, CCI Solutions, and Senior Systems Consultant, Rick Boring, Systems Engineering Technician, Steve Lund, and Senior Designer, Jayna Williams. "We needed speakers that had great pattern control, and, again, aesthetics were incredibly important," Boring says. The solution, he explains, was to embed two digitally steerable Tannoy QFlex 32 Beam Steering Arrays in architectural columns to either side of the sanctuary.
Boring is no stranger to Tannoy technology. CCI's former work includes both a large variety of houses of worship, as well as arenas and large performing arts spaces, for which they have often relied on Tannoy's Dual Concentric in wall/ceiling speakers to suit clients who need a high-end, high quality audio solution.
 Faley is also familiar with Tannoy technology ? his home studio sports two older Tannoy near field monitors ? but it was both Faley's, and Boring's, first use of Tannoy's innovative QFlex loudspeaker array in an install. At first, there were some concerns about the QFlex array being so prominently situated, and discussions about hiding the speakers behind custom designed grills, but those concerns disappeared once the QFlex were installed. Both the client and architect, Kevin Broderick, were pleased. "We didn't even have to paint them," says Boring.
Given the traditional nature of the services at St. Theresa's, no additional sound reinforcement was necessary, he adds. "This was more speech, piano and vocal reinforcement. I don't have any subs in here. It has great directivity. If you stand on a pew in the back row, you can hear it just drop right off."
While the project had been in development for several years, and a number of plans were considered, ultimately it was the solution offered by Broderick Architects that was adopted to meet St. Theresa's overall needs. In addition to drastic aesthetic and structural changes, Broderick's design called for a substantive upgrade in technology in both the nave and the Parish Hall. To meet those needs and keep the technological elements from detracting from the visual impact of the space CCI adopted an ethic of doing more with less ? In terms of lighting, by way of a number of new longer lasting and more economical LED fixtures; and in terms of sound reinforcement, recycling elements of the previous system for use in the Parish Hall, and by choosing Tannoy's QFlex to replace them
Because the QFlex 32's arrays are powered, that also cut down on additional system components ? although Boring did incorporate an external DSP, a Symmetrix Automix Matrix 780 in order to configure the rig for various microphone/room setups, so the room could be set up for use for speech alone, or for use with additional mics, which include several ceiling mounted ambient mics for the choir.
"In the old days you'd use large format horns with great pattern control to get to the back of the room," says Boring. "But typically you'd use half the coverage pattern of the horn to get nice, consistent coverage. That means you'd be spraying the walls with leftover SPL." In this case, a solution that depended on large format horn wasn't an option.
"An old school approach to speaker design wasn't going to work," adds Faley. "It's a lively space, no doubt about it, but intelligibility is quite high. We sat in the dedication services this weekend. The place was full and it was just lovely ? very intelligible, beautiful coverage ? every seat in the house is a good seat now." And the view from each of those seats is equally impressive. "For the amount of visible speaker, for the amount of coverage for a 500 seat auditorium. They're small, they're discreet." For this application it's a great fit. Article by permission Tannoy Tour Install Devision
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