Job Description

Manvers Street Baptist Church

Enlightened were approached to carry out a complete technical upgrade to the audio playback, recording and performance capabilities of this busy and vibrant church.

Situated in the heart of Bath, Manvers Street Baptist Church is a vital resource for the local community. The church has numerous activity/meeting rooms in their open house centre with a full schedule of daily groups ranging from baby and toddler groups, language classes and craft workshops to name but a few. There is also a purpose-built and busy café that also functions as a meeting space. This is all over and above their packed main church hall itinerary of services, concerts and performances. 

Enlightened were approached by the church with a view to updating the existing audio systems that were struggling to cope with the challenging demands placed upon them by a schedule that would be considered busy by any enterprising and dedicated media or arts space. 

The essential requirement was to upgrade their current sound system and recording capability and enhance the hearing loops clarity in the Main Church Hall. A further need was to upgrade the quality of sound playback and hearing loop in the Foyer and Café meeting space.

Through close consultation, it was important to the church that the installation help unify individual church spaces and afford them greater creative control and everyday practical utility while still delivering well balanced, performance quality sound and recording capabilities. It was also of great importance that any installation was delivered sympathetically to the buildings aesthetic beauty and we took particular care to ensure all fittings were discrete and unobtrusive and that all cabling and new connection points were neatly hidden.

We achieved this by utilising white Martin Audio speakers mounted discreetly throughout the main hall and ceiling mounted in the Café area. With the inclusion of a subwoofer beneath the stage and a precisely managed delay to speaker groups a fantastic clarity and depth of tone has been achieved throughout the church. The hearing loop has been upgraded by installing two Sennheiser ambient microphones strategically within the main church to best reproduce the service and performance live loop and deliver greater clarity and depth of tone.

To upgrade and ensure the Main Hall’s audio performance capability well into the future we installed an Allen and Heath QU digital mixing console with the addition of an iPad interface that allows intuitive control from anywhere in the building. 

Audio input was upgraded and made easily accessible with the installation of an Allen and heath XLR, dSnake expander rack in a bespoke panel beneath the stage. Input panels were installed directly into stage points to minimise the need to run cables and to facilitate simplicity of access for performers.  A Yamaha MTX3 Matrix processor was added to allow greater precision over speaker control to and ensure future flexibility. Sennheiser radio microphones and installation of dedicated receivers completed the installations flexibility and audio quality. 

It was important to us and to the church that everyday interaction with their new equipment was as rewarding and simple to use as possible to ensure maximum practical benefit. With this in mind, each individual area had its own Yamaha DCP four-way control panel installed allowing each area to easily control their own output locally.

Categories: 
Worship
Categories 2: