St Mary the Virgin, Witney
Set in the heart of Oxfordshire, this Grade 1* listed parish church, St Mary the Virgin, was a sizable project for APi Sound & Visual.
The Location:
St Mary the Virgin is a beautiful, large Grade 1* listed parish church, set in the heart of a bustling town in Oxfordshire. The church’s presence in the town has been steadily growing, and they now have a large regular congregation both in person and online.
The Challenge:
As with any large project, APi’s Andy Pidsley had a lot to think about when it came to designing the new audio-visual system.
“The church had a strong idea of what they wanted, which helped me quickly narrow down a lot of the equipment I was going to specify. But there was still a lot of thinking to do about speaker positioning and creating a simple user interface for what is a very complex audio and live streaming system.”
The size of the building was a challenge in itself - cable routes had to be found from one end to the other and loudspeaker positions and types had to be carefully chosen. As with all of the APi’s designs, there was a focus on creating an audio-visual system that would be simple for everyone to operate.
Another consideration was the need to disguise the equipment within the church, with the building’s listed status putting strict rules on what could and could not be done. This ultimately was a big reason for the model of loudspeakers used in the sound system design.
Our Solution:
“We decided from an early stage that a demonstration of the loudspeakers would be important, both so that we could make sure they would perform in the space, as well as to give the client an opportunity to see and hear them.”
After a successful demo, the Audac Krya series reinforced their credentials for the installation and a total of 10 ultra-slim line array units were fitted throughout the church, complimented by two compact 12-inch subwoofers.
The live-streaming system was based around three full HD Pan, Tilt, Zoom (PTZ) cameras, which are able to move between preset positions to give the operator almost unlimited shots to send to the live stream. APi’s custom control interface was configured in such a way that live streaming could be operated with minimal effort, with one button to start and stop the streaming and pages to control each camera independently.
“The customised live streaming control surface we have created takes so much stress away for the person operating the system”, states Andy. “Having buttons which are labelled to tell you exactly what they do allows anyone, even someone who has not used the system before, to sit down and be 90% on their way to operating the live streaming system.”
A Yamaha matrix handled all the audio requirements, routing four Sennheiser radio microphone systems, a four-channel floor-mounted input box and four hanging choir microphones to the desired areas of the church. APi’s engineers configured the associated Yamaha iPad app to be personal to the church, making operation as easy as possible from anywhere within the building.
The Outcome:
Andy reflects on a job well done;
“this project was the largest of the year for APi Sound and Visual but was a glowing success thanks to the hard work and skill of our engineers, who made sure that the system was easy to operate, sounded fantastic and had the smallest possible visual impact on the church.”
Now the Oxfordshire church has everything it needs to allow both the physical and online congregation to clearly hear and see the message the church is trying to get across. The delicate selection of equipment has resulted in a high-quality audio-visual system without impacting the heritage and grandeur of the building.
In the weeks following the installation of the new audio-visual system, the church has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the congregation (and not the sound system!). The customer was delighted with the outcome and stated that “Our expectations have been vastly exceeded”, adding that working with APi “felt like a partnership”.
