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Houston's Oldest Catholic Church Selects SLS International's Products |
06-26-03 SLS International SITI announced today that Christ the Incarnate Word, the city's oldest catholic church, had selected its loudspeakers. The Church, located in the heart of downtown Houston next to the Astrodome, is well-known for its old gothic-style stone construction and ornate architectural design. Its elaborate structure, while visually pleasing, doesn't lend itself to excellent acoustics. In order to reduce the high resonance inside the church and improve audio quality, the 1,200-seat church called on Bryan Bazemore of PGF Integrations to install SLS Audio' LS8695 Line Source speaker system.
"The church needed an advanced speaker system installed because the building, like most catholic churches, is made primarily of stone with very high ceilings and deep walls, making the room extremely reverberate," said Mr. Bazemore. "The echo was so strong it was hard to understand someone talking to you 10 feet away, let alone 70."
After holding a demo in the Church between a 12-inch speaker with one horn, commonly used in churches, and the LS8695, a column line array system utilizing 9 SLS PRD500 ribbon drivers, Mr. Bazemore decided SLS was his only solution for the acoustic problems. "When you tightly stack that many SLS ribbons together, one on top of the other, the sound becomes one projection," he said.
"An everyday speaker spreads sound 90 degrees side-to-side and about 40-50 degrees up and down," he added. "By contrast, the LS8695 spreads sound 120 degrees in the horizontal plane and zero degrees in the vertical. This enables a majority of the sound energy in the speech realm to project forward, greatly reducing the reflection off the ceiling and walls. Consequently, there is no difference in volume level whether you are 10 or 100 feet away."
Mr. Bazemore also noted that with a relatively small and architecturally pleasing look to the speakers. "They are unobtrusive and did not deface the ornate beauty of the centuries-old walls and ceiling."
"Many Catholic Churches as well as other denominations are seeing the benefits of the LS8695 speaker system," stated John Gott, President of SLS International. "Our New Technology Ribbon Drivers are the correct devices to create this type of line source speaker system that directs the sound energy to the listeners. The Catholic churches as well as most older Churches were designed with large, open rooms and very little acoustic treatment to help absorb and stop the bouncing sound waves. Our speakers specifically address this problem at a fraction of the cost of adding the acoustic treatment to the rooms to make a conventional speaker system work. Another recent proof of the viability of our LS8695 speaker is that it was selected and used for the special Easter Services at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. The response by St. Patrick's staff and clergy was very positive and future plans for a permanent installation are being discussed."
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