International. Built in 1845, Maaninka is a beautiful traditional church with capacity for 1,200 people that is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The sound system I had been installed years ago and had coverage and intelligibility problems that affected the experience of the parishioners.
The church located in Finland sought the local integrator AVEK Esitystekniikka and Genelec to provide a sound system that lives up to current technological expectations and thus improve the listening experience of all attendees.
Markus Kahelin, Technology Service Manager at Genelec, explains the different challenges of the project; firstly, a large audience area to be covered (985 m2 with very high ceilings and a central dome), and secondly, that the church is a protected building, which is a great challenge for any integrator: "The shape and size of the building generate a relatively long reverberation time and an audible echo of the voice", Kahelin explains. "The existing audio system could not provide a natural, non-colored sound to the entire congregation, and so the intelligibility of the word was compromised."
"The other essential aspect is that the church is listed as a listed building, which means you can't just get there and make holes in the walls or put cables anywhere you want," he continues. "AVEK finally decided to locate all the cables by the roof to reach every part of the church. That, in itself, was already a challenge, because the extra-long runs of cable posed a risk to the quality of the sound, in terms of the levels of interference and latency that could be generated, which in the end would result in audible problems when reproducing the sound. Fortunately at Genelec, we have solutions to these problems!"
The solution was a distributed audio system consisting of 10 Genelec 8430A IP audio monitors, tuned and calibrated using GLM 3 software for Genelec SAM monitor management. According to AVEK audio specialist Jari Pöykiö, the unique combination of a network of Genelec monitors with the calibration capabilities built into each of them through GLM 3 software, solved all their problems.
"The first consideration was the audio quality of the 8430A, they are compact, active and provide premium audio quality and clear sound, without coloration," says Pöykiö. "We mounted them around the church in carefully selected locations from an acoustic point of view, to focus and locate the voice in the right direction and get a sound as natural as possible. The wide dispersion angle of the 8430A allowed us to achieve good coverage throughout all seating areas. Our purpose was to have enough signal sources in the system so that the overall reproduction was relatively low and thus avoid energizing the acoustics of the room or generating any feedback problems with the microphone."
"Once installed, all monitors were calibrated and adjusted based on room acoustics using Genelec's GLM 3 software, which works incredibly well. A particular feature of the system setting was that we assigned individual delays to each monitor to locate the speaker's voice near the nearest monitor, using techniques and principles very similar to those used in theater."
