Toberkeigh
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Toberkeigh church near White Park Bay was one of our early installation projects. They had an amplifier in the pulpit and a couple of column speakers on the walls near the front of the church. There was also a rack of 9 tape decks in a back room. At some stage in history it had been decided that the column speakers weren't enough, so a series of 8 inferior quality speakers had been placed round the walls - including a couple on the back wall facing forwards. The problems: In the recordings, because there was only one microphone which nobody controlled, the speaking was fine, but singing was a solo by the minister - which is OK if he can sing... Parts of the congregation, especially the gallery, couldn't hear what was being said; and they also felt that a hearing aid loop system would be an important addition. The Solution: The forward facing speakers had to go. Speakers should give the impression that the sound is coming from the sound source. If your ears tell you one thing and your eyes tell you something else you actually get seasick. With your brain trying to cope with that, you've got less capacity for actually listening to what's being said. In the pulpit, the current minister doesn't move around much. We tried a few microphones and eventually settled on an AKGD770 This is an inexpensive cardioid microphone which suited his voice better than many more expensive ones. A single microphone (an AT Pro45 for those of you who are interested) hanging from the ceiling to pick up congregational singing not only made the tapes easier to listen to, but also dramatically improved the praise as the congregation competed with themselves to be heard! we installed a mixing desk in the gallery and moved the tape decks up to there too. This gives someone control over the various microphone levels both for the PA and the recordings. For future use, we installed two 'stage boxes' each with connectors for three microphones and a monitor speaker, cabled back to the mixing desk. Speakers were added above and below the gallery, facing the back of the church, to enhance the sound in those more distant areas. At the time, loop amplifiers were prohibitively expensive, so an alternative had to be found. The church had an old amplifier lying unused in the attic. We improvised with that and a coil of electrical wire to make a loop system round the church. Although not an ideal solution, the church's hearing aid wearers found the loop effective, and that's what matters.
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