Old Barn Audio (OBA) turned to Martin Audio CDD series to overcome a challenging situation at the refurbished St. Joseph’s College Chapel in Ipswich.
The majestic Ipswich chapel, forced to close for three years when it fell into disrepair, has finally been brought back to life after a major revamp costing £750,000. Written into the upgrade programme was the provision for a new sound system.
OBA project manager Phil Clark’s first site visit revealed a pyramid shaped building, with no internal walls, and thus no fixing points, and a 60-metre high pitch. His solution was to install three clusters of three CDD8, pointing in each direction and carefully angled to suit the dispersion requirement. Two further CDD8 are positioned either side of the nave, while a slimline SX210 was of perfect dimension to be recessed under the stage, which bears the marble altar.
The OBA director first used EASE to model the room. “We designed the space into eight zones in order to time align the speakers with SMAART and to ensure each zone had linearity of sound. We could then control them individually and run these clusters at a lower level to avoid as little echo as possible in the venue.”
The CDD solution serves a number of purposes. As St. Joseph’s is a musical college, a variety of musical ensembles will play through it — from string quartets to full classical set-ups. And as OBA has found with all its CDD installations it has once again delivered a transparent sound.
“As we all know about CDD it is a beautiful, smooth box, with a nice analogue feel to it all wrapped up with a twist of modern technology and crispness! We specify it all the time because it just works.”
To complete the installation, OBA programmed 12” tablets to control the system via an internal network with access points, while ensuring all cabling has been carefully concealed.
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