Keeping it simple is the watchword for St Ann’s new system

Dating from the 1890s, St Ann’s Church in the Welsh seaside town of Rhyl now boasts thoroughly modern audio-visual systems – both in the church and the church hall – courtesy of Richard King Systems. The facilities now include upgraded sound systems, new audio loop systems, updated AV-projector systems, and comprehensive wi-fi coverage.

In the church, top quality microphones – both fixed and radio – combine with powerful signal processer control, amplification and loudspeakers to provide clear speech intelligibility in all the listening areas.

As well as improving speech intelligibility, a key requirement for the audio refresh was that the installed system would be easy to operate for non-technical people. For that reason, Richard Hughes of Richard King Systems chose to build the new solution around a Symetrix processor.

Richard explained: “Often, we see churches of this size being fitted with a traditional mixing desk, but the plethora of buttons, knobs and faders can look like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and very intimidating for the average person. With a processer we can hide all of that complexity.”

Although microphone mixing has been automated, it is sometimes desirable to mute or adjust the level of a particular microphone or sound input. To make that foolproof, a custom interface was created that only presents level and mute controls to the operator and runs on an off-the-shelf Microsoft Surface tablet PC.

Comprehensive fine tuning for the loudspeakers installed in the church is also handled by the processer, with the sound from the differing set of cabinets being time aligned for optimum performance.

The audio loop systems have been designed, installed, tested and certified in accordance with the recognised standard IEC 60118-4:2014, AMD1:2017 by the approved loop assessors at Richard King Systems.

For further information visit www.richardkingsystems.co.uk