We provided sound system design services for the new St.Mary's Parish Catholic church, in Vancouver, BC. This 400 seat sanctuary has a 40 foot high ceiling, and many hard surfaces high in the room. Speech intelligibility was a priority but the room had to support the church music program as well, which was a combination of choral singing and amplified music. The ceiling structure is an open wood slat, which provided a good location for absorptive material, and would enable us to leave the upper side walls hard to provide a lively musical environment, while using directional loudspeaker components to achieve the speech intelligibility.

The system uses a center cluster for speech reinforcement, and a left/right system for a broad stereo image. Each stereo channel has complete seating coverage, except for the side alcove areas which have separate delayed infill systems that receive delayed audio from the stereo channels, plus the mono speech signal. These signals arrive after the direct sound, in the Haas zone, to maintain, as much as possible, the illusion that the sound is coming from the live sources. The small balcony at the rear has an additional delayed zone and above balcony in-fill system.

This project was done while we worked for BKL Consultants between 1991 and 1997.