Introduction
A Large House of Worship will have more than one main hall, multiple rooms and cater for more than 500 people. Audio would need to be routed and / or isolated. Multiple speakers may be needed in the main hall and for each room or zone and multichannel amplifiers will be needed. A more complex mixer will be required, processors to handle routing and programming, several mics will be required, a rack, a control room, air conditioning, networking, design, planning and installation by experts such as ourselves. Budget will be in the 10’s of thousands to above £100,000. Every system will need to be tailed to the venue and we’ll discuss some of the features and equipment needed. We’ll give an example at the end so you can see what a bespoke state-of-the-art system can cost!
Speakers
Halls will probably be large enough that multiple speakers are needed. The front of a hall would carry the bulk of the sound and the sides, rear or ceiling speakers would reinforce the sound from the front. Smaller speakers may be required in other rooms or zones.
Front of House Speakers
2-A column speaker would be a good choice for this as it allows a wide horizontal distribution of sound at various vertical levels. We recommend the JBL CBT series such as the CBT-50LA-1 for £900, CBT-100LA for £1300 or CBT 1000 for £3800 (pictured). Speakers should be placed around 6m apart and a typical hall would need 2-4 front speakers.
Side Speakers
Column speakers again would be a good choice here and we’d recommend the JBL CBT-50LA-1 for £900 or the JBL CBT-100LA-1 for £1300. Place these every 6m from the front along the sides.
Ceiling Speakers
Ceiling speakers are a good choice to supplement front speakers if the ceiling is low enough. If the ceiling is high, smaller column or wall mounted speakers would be better. We recommend the JBL Control 26CT for £250 or JBL Control 18CT for £300. Place these 6m apart in rows.
Rooms or smaller spaces
A wall mounted speaker or ceiling speakers would be a good choice here. We’d recommend the JBL Control One Pro wall mounted speakers for £150 for a pair.
Amplifiers
A large venue will require multiple channels of amplification. To setup a hall properly, speakers should be individually equalised and time aligned. However, speakers of the same type may be grouped together in rows if they are spread evenly and driven by a single channel which can be equalised and time aligned by an audio processor.
Front of House Amplification
For the maximum flexibility and sound quality, amplifiers with on board DSP are recommended. We recommend the Crown DCi series of amplifiers such as the DCi 8|300DA for £5500. This amp features 8 x 300W of power, DSP and Dante digital audio. An amp such as this can drive the front speakers in 2 halls with 4 front speakers in each hall.
Side and Ceiling Amplifiers
The above Crown DCi series of amplifiers are a very good choice for driving side and ceiling amplifiers in the main hall, but there are other options as sound quality is less critical. For those working on a budget the Cloud CV8125 for £2400 gives 8 x 125W of amplification at 100V line level. A line level amp allows speakers with transformers to be connected together in parallel to reduce cabling. 8 Channels can drive 2 rows of stereo ceiling speakers in 2 halls (2 middle Left, 2 middle right, 2 rear left, 2 rear right per hall).
Zone Amplifiers
A small room or corridor / foyer may require only a couple of speakers but need to be controlled independently to allow sound isolation or routing. Here 100V line amps or low impedance amplifiers would be suitable. Amplifiers such as the Crown DCi series are capable of switching between 100V line level or low impedance but may be overkill. A suitable alternative would be a Bias Q1 4 channel amp for £1600 giving 4 x 300W of amplification with a simple switch to change from 100V to low impedance.
Mixers
A Large venue will need a front of house mixer per hall where events can take place. The front of house mixers can feed back to a main mixer or processor in a control room. A digital mixer with remote control via a smartphone or tablet is ideal. We recommend the Yamaha TF series of mixers such as the TF1 for £2800. This features 32 channels of mixing using switchable fader banks, remote app control and optional Dante expansion. Alternatively a Soundcraft Expression mixer would be a good choice such as the Expression 1 for £2200.
Digital Snakes
Instead of using a front of house mixer a digital snake may be used which is configured in software or via a mixer and allows multiple inputs to be sent to a main mixer in the control room using Dante digital audio via Cat 5e/6 network cable. Analogue snakes also exist but are rapidly being made extinct due to the flexibility of digital snakes. The Yamaha TIO1608D for £1400 is Dante ready and works well with the Yamaha TF series of mixers.
Processing
An Audio processor acts at the heart of the system allowing audio to be routed or isolated throughout the building. The processor can also integrate with other components of the system such as the amplifiers and mixers. This is called an Ecosystem. The Harmon Pro ecosystem consists of BSS Soundweb processors, Crown amplifiers, Soundcraft Mixers and JBL speakers. QSC also have a very good ecosystem. We recommend the BSS Soundweb London processors such as the Soundweb London BLU806 with Dante for £7200.
Control
With a sound processor you can control almost every aspect of the sound with customisable DSP blocks such as Gain, Graphic EQ, Parametric EQ, Limiters, Compression, Delay and many others. Additionally sound can be routed using a matrix switch or router to allow sound to be sent from one hall to another or the entire building or customised as required. Control can be via custom wall panels, a computer running the control software or a smartphone or tablet.
Above we can see a screenshot of Audio Architect software which controls the BSS Soundweb London and the control panel of a Crown DCi amp. Not only can you control the amp with the software, but the amp control panel can also let you assign JBL speakers with custom EQ for the output and monitor the health of the system. Audio Architect also integrates with the Motion Control iPad app for remote control of the system.
Microphones
There are two ways microphones can be used – Wired or Wireless. We recommend wired mics where possible as wireless mics are more expensive, prone to interference and batteries need to be changed or charged often.
Wired Mics
A Lapel mic is a very good way to capture speech. It’s discrete and easy to put on. We recommend the Audio Technica Pro 70 for around £130. For a Handheld mic we recommend the Shure SM58s classic microphone for around £110 with a switch. You would need a good microphone stand for the handheld mic which is about £75.
Radio Mics
Despite cost, range, interference and battery life issues, a radio mic gives freedom to move around without being tethered by a wire. Radio mics can be analogue or digital. Radio mics operate on 3 sets of frequencies – CH38 or CH70 for analogue and digital uses 2.4GHz/5GHz (the same as Wi-Fi). CH38 systems require a licence to operate but are less prone to interference. CH70 systems are free to use but are more prone to interference. 2.4GHz/5GHz systems are free to use also but compete with other wifi systems in the area which can be congested. Battery life is an issue as most radio mics last around 4-8 hours only.
If you need a simple mic system, we recommend Sennheiser radio mics such as the analogue Sennheiser XSW1-ME2 Ch70 Wireless radio system for around £280 or the Sennheiser XSW-D Digital Lavalier set for around £350.
For more complex setups requiring multiple mics we recommend the Sennheiser EW-D ME-2 Digital Lavalier set or EW-D 635-S for around £620 each.
Cables
We should always use good quality cable. For public buildings you must use Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH or LSOH) cable by law for permanently installed cables such as speaker cables.
Speaker Cable
Speaker cable should be double insulated and should be of sufficient gauge to handle current loads from the amplifier. We recommend Van Damme 2 x 1.5mm Ecoflex install grade speaker cable for smaller runs around 10m and 2 x 2.5mm for longer runs less than 50m. Runs above 50m should use 4mm cable. 10m of 2 x 2.5mm speaker cable is about £60.
Microphone Cable
Microphone cable should be twin core shielded LSZH installation grade or at least 5mm XLR cable for direct connections to microphones.
We recommend Van Damme Digilog Ecoflex Install grade shielded audio cable for permanent installations – 10m is about £15.
For microphone and instrument cables we recommend Van Damme Classic Instrument XLR cable – 5m is about £30.
Summary
Let’s see how a theoretical system stacks up. For this example we have 2 large halls, 1 small hall, 2 foyers and 3 small rooms. The large halls have 4 front speakers, and 2 rows of 4 ceiling speakers each. The small hall has 2 wall mounted speakers and a row of 4 ceiling speakers. Each foyer and small room have 2 wall mounted speakers each apart from 1 small room which has 4 ceiling speakers instead of wall mounted speakers. Events can happen in any the 3 halls and isolation is required at times and other times sound will come from one of the main halls to the whole building. Each of the 3 halls has a wired lapel mic, a wired handheld mic with stand and a wireless handheld mic. The system is completely digital using Dante Digital Audio Networking.
| Item | Quantity | Unit Price | Line Total |
| Large front speakers JBL CBT-100LA-1 | 8 | 1300 | 10400 |
| Large Ceiling Speakers JBL Control 18CT | 16 | 300 | 4800 |
| Medium Ceiling Speakers JBL Control 26CT | 8 | 250 | 2000 |
| Wall mounted speakers JBL Control One Pro (pair) | 4 | 150 | 600 |
| Yamaha TF1 Mixer + Dante Card | 1 | 3400 | 3400 |
| Yamaha TIO1608D Digital Snake with Dante | 3 | 1400 | 4200 |
| BSS Soundweb London BLU806 with Dante | 1 | 7200 | 7200 |
| Crown DCi 8|300DA Front Speaker Amp with Dante | 1 | 5500 | 5500 |
| Cloud CV8125 100V Ceiling Speaker Amp + Dante card | 1 | 2750 | 2750 |
| Bias Q1 4 channel amp with Dante | 2 | 1600 | 3200 |
| Wired Lapel Mic Audio Technica Pro70 | 3 | 150 | 450 |
| Wired Handheld Mic Shure SM58SE | 3 | 100 | 300 |
| Wireless Handheld Radio Mic EW-D 835-S | 3 | 620 | 1860 |
| 24 port Network Switch plus networking for Dante Digital Audio | 1 | 500 | 500 |
| Speaker Cable 2 x 2.5mm LSZH 100m reel | 20 | 570 | 11400 |
| Microphone Cable 10m | 6 | 15 | 90 |
| Microphone Stand | 3 | 75 | 225 |
| iPad for Control | 1 | 320 | 320 |
| PC for control | 1 | 500 | 500 |
| 42U Rack | 1 | 1000 | 1000 |
| Total Package Cost excluding Installation | 60695 |
We have seen that a large house of worship with multiple halls, rooms and zones can be quite costly to build with our example costing just over £60,000 in just hardware excluding installation. However, this is a state-of-the-art system – the limitless flexibility, expandability and sound quality is much higher and really is designed for the next 20 years, so should be seen as a sound investment.
Get in touch with us for further information, installation details and to see how we can help.