When the pandemic arrived in early 2020, houses of worship (HoW) had to switch completely from in-person to remote attendance. Where the AV focus had been hitherto overwhelmingly on audio and video inside of churches, all worship stakeholders suddenly had to get to grips with video conferencing AV, to make sure they had the means to reach their congregants in lockdown.
Over five years on, while many HoWs have unsurprisingly continued to stream their services to optimise their reach, since 2023 (considered to be a very strong year for the worship market) we’ve seen a return to investment in on-site lighting and display systems – with particular emphasis on audio.
Nathan Ihlenfeldt is technical director at Stage Audio Works, the South Africa-based technology solutions supplier, manufacturer and distributor. “Churches were delivering services remotely even before the pandemic, but they definitely made more effort during the pandemic as it was the only way to remain engaged with their congregations,” he says. “However, today the focus has shifted back to in-person gatherings that are supported by remote production, but it’s not the primary driver. There hasn’t been much talk about dedicated streaming solutions in a while.”
CRUCIAL CONNECTIONS
Connection is crucial in a worship environment, so intelligible audio is an important factor. Most people now have access to high quality loudspeakers at home, so live experiences have to match this. And with ongoing trends of churches being used as multi-purpose spaces – whether this is a doubling up as a live music venue or conference space – a quality PA set-up, such as Atlas IED’s Aimline Series of digitally steerable, multichannel column arrays, an Installation Best of Show award winner at ISE 2024 – is essential. Aimline column arrays precisely control directivity in the vertical axis, resulting in optimal coverage and the reduction of reflection from hard surfaces for enhanced intelligibility.
An adherence to addressing enduring reinforcement requirements – which can often be challenging in HoWs due to the age of the buildings and/or problematic acoustics – coupled with a desire to subtly refine their solutions, is discernible in most audio providers’ responses within this article. Renkus-Heinz is no exception.
Karl Brunvoll, the company’s vice-president of international sales, remarks: “The goal for any [HoW] sound system is consistent front-to-back audio coverage. Beam-steering technology allows loudspeakers to tightly control the sound and place it where needed – on the congregation – while keeping it away from other surfaces that may cause echoes and reverberation. The high directivity of our beam-steering arrays ensures intelligible speech and natural music reproduction for an engaging worship service.”
Moreover, Renkus-Heinz is “always listening to customer feedback as an input into our development roadmap” – a process that led to the development of the UBX Series of passive column arrays, which are designed to bring the acoustic and aesthetic benefits of steered sound into the passive realm, and were introduced in 2022.
“The high directivity of our UBX Series is the perfect solution for the highly reverberant spaces found in many [HoWs],” remarks Brunvoll. “By steering sound away from walls and ceilings to focus directly on the congregation, our Passive UniBeam Technology delivers clear, consistent audio for the whole community. Unlike traditional passive columns, UBX Series loudspeakers often don’t need to be physically aimed or tilted to ensure ideal coverage; with pre-steered beams, the UBX Series can be mounted plumb to the wall, reducing architectural intrusion and ensuring clear sightlines for worshippers.”
AVOIDANCE ZONES
Inclusivity is at the core of Listen Technologies’ presence in the market, where its assistive listening systems include solutions for WiFi, and two-way communication. Speaking to Installation while he was still regional sales manager at Listen Technologies (he’s now design consultant at CTI), Brian Reilly observed that assistive listening in HoWs is not required by the Americans With Disabilities Act (although in some states, such as California and Texas, it is stipulated by separate building regulations), meaning that HoW staff are often providing this capacity “out of the goodness of their hearts and to give a good experience because they care about the people that are coming into their spaces”.
It’s also important to address what Reilly implied, when chatting to this magazine, is a lingering misunderstanding of HoW audio in some quarters: “You can have all these wonderful audio systems [in a church], and some might say that the people coming in with hearing deficiencies have hearing aids, so isn’t that good enough for them? But in reality, the distance for good, clear communication and pickup for somebody with a hearing aid [to experience intelligibility] is about three to six feet. Anything beyond that, it’s going to be louder, noisier, more confusing and not a good experience. And what happens then is that congregants might leave, which also means that any kind of contributions they might make to this particular HoW leaves with them.”
So it’s no wonder that “facilities are taking a look at their technology because things have gone remote in the last couple of years and now it’s starting to come back”. Among the solutions that are most in-demand are Listen EVERYWHERE, Listen Technologies’ audio-over-WiFi solution that allows venues to stream audio over their wireless network to guests’ smartphones. Guests access the audio via an app and listen with their headphones or earbuds.
The system includes new receivers, beacons and servers, while the end-user app reflects a desire to accommodate the expectations of younger congregants. Reilly: “With the advent of our ListenWIFI product, more specifically, beacons, the venue can design the Wi-Fi system to automatically trigger content when an end user enters a predetermined zone, providing a truly seamless experience. We have digital natives now coming up and so we want to make sure that their experience is similar to what they’re having in schools and at home.”
DE FACTO STANDARD
Rising demand for wireless and IP-oriented systems is also discernible in HoW’s utilisation of intercom systems, notes Clear-Com president Bob Boster: “We have seen an increased uptake on wireless and IP-based intercom use in the HoW market over the last few years as services have become much more reliant on people contributing remotely and live streaming. Wireless intercom systems have become the de facto standard, as more people want to be untethered from a single area.”
There is also a growing market for unified management solutions, including for churches that operate across multiple physical sites. To this end, Clear-Com’s Arcadia Central Station, introduced in 2021, “has been incredibly popular with the HoW market as it integrates multiple systems in a compact and easy-to-use package that can grow with a church’s needs through licensed ports, making it a solid investment centrepiece to an intercom system”.
Arcadia supports Clear-Com’s FreeSpeak digital wireless system, the HelixNet digital partyline for wired endpoints and – with the latest update – connects to the LQ Series of IP interfaces. “This brings in the option to incorporate Clear-Com’s Agent-IC mobile app (very popular as a BYOD option), Station-IC virtual desktop client, and two-way radio interfacing,” says Boster. “LQ is also a popular tool for linking together multiple church campuses, so many of the HoW users already have one in their toolkit.”
ONGOING EMPHASIS
Invited to consider the outlook for HoW audio over the next few years, the consensus is that churches will continue to invest in new systems to improve the experience for all congregants, while there will also be an ongoing emphasis on making system usage and management as fuss-free as possible.
“Worshippers – and church leaders – expect AV production quality that is similar to secular events,” says Ihlenfeldt. “There is an emphasis on better management and easier to use systems to try and reduce reliance on volunteers, who are often unskilled in this part of the world. There has been no specific influence on our projects except that people are perhaps making more informed choices.”
Finally, Brunvoll says that quality is key. “We see a trend that traditional places of worship need to improve the quality of the existing sound systems to meet the expectations of their worshippers,” he says. “Our experience is that congregations worldwide are allocating funds for better, more suitable technology, with extraordinarily positive results. This trend will continue, and we are determined to be present with sound solutions that make a difference.”
