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RG Jones Places St. Paul’s on Complete Soundweb Network
System designer and project manager, Jon Berry, favoured BSS Soundweb architecture following discussions with Arup Acoustics’ consultant Sam Wise. Arup's had been asked to provide an independent assessment of the original system and identified that while RG Jones’ bespoke speakers were still serviceable, the front end — including custom mixer, graphics and delay lines — needed a substantial overhaul to satisfy the broadening function of the Cathedral, and the audio requirements of congregation sizes up to 2,600 people.
As one of the cathedral’s preferred suppliers, RG Jones were contracted to undertake the work by St. Paul’s Dean & Chapter, acting on the advice of Martin Stancliffe Architects.
DSP, matrix routing and signal distribution were certainly not facilities available when the building, with its distinctive dome, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the great fire of 1666 destroyed the original church … nor when RG Jones first became involved in the Cathedral, some 30 years ago.
Jon explains: “Originally the system was designed for speech reinforcement only and an enhancement of the natural acoustics; but the Cathedral’s current requirement is more versatile, embracing different types of media, such as corporate events and concerts. As part of the regular events there is a lot more music involved now, and the requirement for using radio mics, with the ability to mix them, has increased.”
The system he evolved is based around three 9088iis Soundwebs with a pair of 9000iis Hubs and a 9008iis Output Expander — providing built-in redundancy. At the same time, RG Jones renewed all the broadcast standard patch panels, utilising multicore for the input cabling, with new multicore from the amplifier outputs to the termination strips.
“Soundweb has allowed us to achieve more gain before feedback,” says Jon. "And since it is often required to run operator-free, it uses the automatic mixing features, along with the flexibility that we can change certain configurations using presets — such as the 24 delay points — within Soundweb.”
RG Jones has provided eight media feeds as well as the new patchbay — and with over 100 different mic points set around the cathedral the common mic inputs are now patched through to the Soundweb.
The company has had long experience of using Soundweb where broadcasters are involved — notably at the All England Club during Wimbledon Fortnight. Knowing that they are approved by the BBC gave them comfort before Christmas when a series of archbishop dialogues saw the installed system integrated with an RG Jones hire system. “One thing we needed to have was industry-standard connections and a recognisable interface.”
At St. Paul’s, Soundweb mainly functions in two modes — with operator-free settings (where a good deal of compression is applied), and attended. Jon Berry has designed the set-up for ease of use by non-audio professional staff. “They like a bulletproof system and we have provided our own custom-designed hardware interface and touch panel display, which allows them to turn the speakers on and off via Soundweb. Being programmable the last settings can be instantly recalled when the scene changes back.”
Via Soundweb — which has also been configured to interface with the Cathedral’s fire alarm and VA system — RG Jones has also managed to tame a highly-reverberant room with channel EQ’s on the inputs and outputs and different delay taps.
Now the company is working on further expansion, and plan in the future to implement a wireless control system based on using a tablet PC.
13th April 2005
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