Built in 1914, the picturesque Five Wounds Portuguese National Church is one of the
most photographed, sketched, and painted buildings in the area. The Old World-
style Catholic church’s architecture exudes Iberian charm and grace, but its
acoustics have proven problematic over the years, with intelligibility an issue for
their traditional Latin Mass.
“This was a particularly challenging project because of the building’s age,” begins
Joe Orlando of Atwater, California, systems designer and integrator Commercial
Media Systems. “It took three guys a full day just to run wire to the loft. The
building has old knob-and-tube wiring with 100 rows of live wires under the floor,
and the grounding was almost non-existent. And then there were the acoustics.”
Not surprisingly, the room’s ceilings are high and arched, and the sanctuary
includes a transept. It’s the sort of space that gives system designers nightmares.
The old distributed sound system was, Orlando reports, “absolutely terrible.”
Orlando called on Layer 8 president Rocky Giannetta, an expert in acoustical
measurement, system tuning, and room modeling and analysis. Giannetta demoed a
passive column and a Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC16-RN, part of the next generation
Iconyx Gen5 Series. “Rocky documented reverb times as long as three to four
seconds at the back of the room – the kind of conditions that could be best
addressed with steerable beams.”
Rather than opting for a left/right pair, Orlando flew a single Renkus-Heinz IC24-16-
RN digitally steerable column array on house left to serve as the main house
loudspeaker. “Less is more in such a reverberant room,” he observes. “With two
sources, you can have multiple arrival times and reflection issues from the
transepts. The IC24-16-RN can give you up to eight separate beams, so you can do
quite a lot with just one column.”
The IC24-16-RN is part of the new Iconyx Gen5 series, the very latest in the
evolution of beam steering technology. Iconyx Gen5 integrates the power of
advanced beam steering algorithms with the intuitive control of the newly
redesigned RHAON II system designer software.
The IC24-16-RN was mounted on a 12×12-inch wooden column with a gap between
the inner column and the outer plastered wood. “We ran wires between the big
wooden column and the plaster,” Orlando recalls. “It was strong old wood, but
drilling and doing the wiring right were challenging.”
On house right, directly across from the IC24-16-RN, a smaller IC8-RN steered
array covers an area that needed a small amount of front fill. A CFX41 four-inch
coaxial two-way loudspeaker provides monitoring for the main priest’s chair.
The church has a preacher’s “crow’s nest” with a spiral staircase; below this
staircase, Orlando secreted a Renkus-Heinz CFX12S 12-inch high-performance
subwoofer, which delivers powerful sub-bass from 40 to 120 Hz. “The subwoofer is
hidden from view behind a cloth scrim,” says Orlando. “It’s only used for music
needing the lower octave, in order to not excite the room where it’s not warranted.”
The non-powered CFX41 and CFX12S are driven with Labgruppen amplifiers. For
microphone mixing, system management, and touch control, Orlando chose an Atlas
Sound BlueBridge DSP.
Iconyx Gen5 loudspeakers are tuned with Renkus-Heinz’ new RHAON II software.