Cathedral of the Imaculate Conception

Built in the 1990s, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Crookston, Minnesota is a beautiful church. All that wood and brick in a well laid out room (good sightlines-plenty of light) is spectacular.

Unfortunately, all that wood and brick made the room very reverberant. This made their sound system almost unintelligible. There were constant complaints-no one could hear!

Father Robert Schreiner wrote, "I am the 3rd pastor ... who is making an attempt to do something about a sound system which is universally acclaimed as horrible and a failure."

Father Robert Schreiner went on to say, "I don't want patches or fixes or something 'better' . I want a system which my successor won't have to correct."

Their old sound system was, "universally acclaimed as horrible and a failure."

He added, "My experience of your work at St Leos and Maternity of Mary . . as well as the chapel at St Paul Seminary leads me to believe that you folks can do the job."

We appreciated the vote of confidence and- always up for a challenge- started work on the computer model for the room.

We found that (as we expected) the reverb time was huge - similar to a stadium. The room would need acoustical treatment to reduce the reverberation to an acceptable level. Using the experience we got from our work at Ridder Arena we produced a design for acoustically absorbent panel to be mounted on the walls. With the room acoustics improved, we were able to design a sound system that solved all of Father Schreiner's problems. BOSE Panaray LT 9702, MB-4 and 402 speakers were used to provide the even coverage and the sound quality this room needed.

BOSE has a new product called ControlSpace

BOSE has a new product called ControlSpace. It is a tremendously flexible digital processor. It can also route inputs and outputs and turn any part of the system on or off. This allows us to program almost any combination of functions that can be used as presets. The customer was almost as excited about the possibilities as we were.

The heart of the new system was the new BOSE ControlSpace.
BOSE says,"The ControlSpaceTM ESP-88 ... has ... Parameter sets. These potentially complex scenarios can then be named and (stored). The end user then needs only to select the event type on the ... control center. All source selection and system control functions happen automatically".

What does that mean?

In our own words it means that ControlSpace is a digital processor with PRESETS. It can be configured to provide single button solutions for almost all of your needs.
Presets can be made for:
• Summer services with no choir and pre-recorded music
• Weddings
• Choir practice
• Services where attendance is low (some speakers turned off)
• Services where overflow areas are used (speakers turned on)
• Controlling recordings
• Turning on your 32 channel mixer for the service with the full band!

ControlSpace digital processor
click on picture for pdf file
ControlSpace makes your sound system easy to use.

Getting back to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception:
After solving their audio quality and coverage problems, we set up the ControlSpace to make the system provide the exact presets they needed. We also added local control of selected functions.

The ushers can control the level of the lecturn and wireless mics. The choir mics are also accessable from their location.

In this system, ControlSpace acts as a compressor, mixer, router, eq and delay. That eliminates these items (and their cost) from your sound system. And makes the sound system very easy to use!

You can have these benefits in your sound system! Call us today!

"Peace of mind is an easy to use sound system"

Do you need a new sound system in your church? Call EMIAudio 612-789-2496 or 1-800-832-5174 BACK