Heritage buildings always present unique challenges when re-purposed for modern applications, and Sydenham Street United Church, home of The Spire Arts & Community Hub in Kingston, Ontario, is no exception.
Since 1852, music has been a crucial part of worship at the church – a legacy that continues in the facility’s sacred and secular usages and includes a wide range of performances/events hosted by The Spire. Consequently, any system inhabiting the space had to provide high intelligibility for speech but also musicality for traditional and contemporary performances, which led to the installation of a Meyer Sound PA comprising of two Meyer Sound CAL 64 Steerable-Beam Loudspeaker arrays and 4 Meyer USW-210P self-powered subs.
“The questions around what speaker system to go with were really around intelligibility. We do everything you can imagine: opera, choir, orchestras, speaking events, lecture series, seminars, funerals, weddings and Sunday services,” says Sam MacLeod, General Manager for The Spire. “It’s a 172-year-old facility. The main performance hall is 750 seats – but with the balcony, vaulted ceilings, and galleries that can trap sound and bounce it all around, it’s a challenging space for reinforced and unreinforced sound.”
“As we began to look at this project, we considered a number of different loudspeaker options,” explains Don Klassen, Sales Rep. and System Designer at London, Ontario-based Horizon Solutions. “The CALs fit because of what they're capable of doing in terms of cutting down on reflections by using their beam steering capabilities to aim one beam into the upper balcony and one beam to cover the main floor.” Preserving the sanctuary’s aesthetic was also important, he adds: “One of the things the heritage committee said was that the CAL loudspeakers would work visually. Other loudspeakers we talked about, they said no to because they didn’t fit the architecture.”
Because the balcony and lower (orchestra) seating areas wrap around a thrust stage in a horseshoe configuration, there was only one area for speaker placement that wouldn’t impact aesthetics but would still serve the space’s multi-purpose needs: a 16-inch flat area on either side of the proscenium arch where the arrays are wall-mounted with one sub below and above each.
Klassen and Carl Lukings, Owner of Horizon Solutions, collaborated on the system design with GerrAudio Distribution’s Ian Robertson. “We’ve been talking and meeting with The Spire for about a year and a half, and Ian helped an awful lot on site to determine the exact loudspeaker placement before we did the install,” Klassen says, adding that Horizon Solutions has worked with Gerr “for many years and more often recently as we’ve used Meyer loudspeakers on more projects. And we trust CAL for musical applications from our experience at the London Grand Theatre, where CAL is the main PA for musicals.”
“It’s a unique space and a unique install,” Robertson puts in, “highly reverberant by design because churches of that era were constructed to enhance choir performances. Frequency wise, and in terms of coverage and aesthetics, the CALs work well given the space and the limitations we had for where we could and could not put speakers,” he says. “The CAL allows us to put energy where the listeners are and to avoid adding energy to the rest of the space, so we get higher intelligibility. They’re also very musical, so they work well in this scenario.”
Given the large thrust area of the stage and the fact that the loudspeakers are positioned well upstage of a good portion of it, there was some concern about feedback. “With a traditional point source loudspeaker system, the potential of having a lot of spill onto that stage area from this location would’ve been significant, but because of the CAL's unique beam steering ability, there was no chance of feedback whatsoever,” Klassen notes. “And we tried it during a demo with a couple of different microphones and walked right up to the speaker, and there was not even a hint of feedback.”
“One of the interesting things about CAL is that you can physically get very close to it because when you’re close, you’re only in the coverage pattern of a small percentage of the drivers in the box,” Robertson says. “The farther you get away from it, the more of those drivers sum together, and then you get the level in the house. So, once you’re inside the critical distance, the level drops as you get closer to the speakers – so you can get massive gain before feedback.”
“Another thing that we implemented as we were commissioning the system to reduce reflections was giving The Spire the ability to turn the upper beam off when people were only on the main floor,” Klassen notes.
MacLeod adds that, while he was less familiar with CAL than other Meyer products, he trusts Meyer and has had a lengthy relationship with GerrAudio – all of which played a part in his choice of Meyer. “When I had a Meyer UPA system, if we ever had a problem, which was extremely rare, Gerr was right there. The people at GerrAudio are excellent. It’s a great, long-lasting, innovative company that deals in high-quality equipment.”
When MacLeod joined The Spire in late 2022, the upgrade to the performance hall was already in the works. “We looked at a number of different options; some were more powerful, but the CALs were above all the rest for intelligibility.” Additionally, he says: “We can modulate how we use the subs as well through some of the presets that we have available – so we’re able to, on the fly, customize it to what we are doing and how we want it to interact with the space, which is awesome.”
Beyond that, it allows the various organizations using the space, including Sydenham Street United Church’s congregation and worship team, to expand their usage, combining amplified and unamplified sources as needed. “It gives them way more options. The CALs give choirs and orchestras that ‘cave’ they like while still being able to cut through when they need to. That’s not something we could get with any other options we looked at,” MacLeod says.
Since the installation's completion in early 2024, the response has been nothing but positive. “When we first turned it on, there were a ton of people in the room, and it was beautiful. We’re getting exactly what we wanted. We feel like, with this sound system, we hit a turning point. For intelligibility in a complicated acoustic space, the CALs are perfect. It’s a unique piece of architecture, and stewarding it for future generations is essential to many people. So, we’re saving it, not just for the existing congregation but also for communities yet to come.”