Over 176 years of history
The CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH, located in downtown Sydney, is the first Baptist Church established in Australia and is, accordingly, the ‘Mother Church’ of all Baptist Churches in Australia which now numbers over 900. The first Church was built in 1836 and the existing building was erected in its present location 1937. In the Church’s long history there have been many ministers and changes in the nature of the congregation. Today is very different from the first service in 1836. Today in 2010, the Church ministers to Sunday congregations, who meet in five services, covering all ages and nationalities.
Sunday morning starts with Mandarin and Cantonese services with simultaneous translation into English. The services have a wide variety of musical and presentational styles and this all means that high quality audio reproduction is essential.
The Church service features live music and speech on a multi level performance area in a room with a very high ceiling
Voice, music and multimedia in a difficult acoustic environment.
HPI-8i with asymmetrical HF coverage covers the balcony area with a sonically seamless transition from the primary system on the ground level
At the time the Church was built, house of worship architectural fashion was high ceilings and reverberant spaces for unamplified voice. Today the reverberant acoustics create intelligibility issues for amplified speech and music. This is particularly problematic for congregations that have any level of hearing impairment or are listening to a language not their native tong. Add to this mix live band music and the environment is difficult for both listener and musicians.
The balcony delay loudspeakers art timed to maintain the sonic image at the performance area
The Quest HPI series systems have been designed to help mitigate the difficulties of these reverberant spaces by implementing technology to direct the sound to where it is needed, (the audience) and not to the reflective ceiling and walls of the listening area. The result is a much clearer voice and a lower reverberant field, (which can “drown” consonant sounds and make the voice less intelligible regardless of the sound pressure level). The Central Baptist Church has three sets of loudspeakers to cover the three primary listening areas.
HPI-110 is the primary front of house audio source
- Two HPI-110 speakers and two QM600S sub bass speakers to cover the primary listening area.
- Two HPI-8i speakers set to cover the balcony area on a timed delay.
- Two HPI-05 speakers set on a short delay to cover the under balcony area. Amplifiers for powering the system are Quest QA series.
This combination of speakers gives a very even coverage of the whole listening area for both speech and music, including a rock band for the youth oriented services.
The lightweight high powered HPI-110 has many rigging and flying options but still works well as a wall mounted box
Pastor Rev. David Y.T. Tse and his congregation are very pleased with their new audio system and congratulated Streamstone Audio for the excellent results and quality installation.
In the “engine room”. Powered by Quest QA series amplifiers
Under the balcony. A second delayed system using the new miniature HPI-05 loudspeakers also on delay
