St. Joseph’s Chapel Revamps with Martin Audio CDD

Old Barn Audio (OBA) recently turned to Martin Audio’s CDD series to overcome a challenging situation at the refurbished St. Joseph’s College Chapel in Ipswich, UK. The majestic Ipswich chapel, forced to close for three years when it fell into disrepair, has finally been brought back to life after a major revamp costing £750,000. Written into the upgrade program was the provision for a new sound system.

The chapel itself belongs to the independent school, St. Joseph’s College, who approached OBA as the result of a recommendation.

OBA project manager Phil Clark’s first site visit revealed a pyramid shaped building, with no internal walls, and thus no fixing points, and a 196-foot high pitch. His solution was to install three clusters of three CDD8, pointing in each direction and carefully angled to suit the dispersion requirement. Two further CDD8 are positioned either side of the nave, while a slimline SX210 was of perfect dimension to be recessed under the stage, which bears the marble altar.

“The space is 165 ft. across and 165 ft. deep, with arches separating three sides of the pyramid,” explained Clark. “A standard wall or column mounting scenario was not available, so the only option was to mount the clusters on the underside of the arches to serve the venue.”

The OBA director first used EASE to model the room. “We designed the space into eight zones in order to time align the speakers with SMAART and to ensure each zone had linearity of sound. We could then control them individually and run these clusters at a lower level to avoid as little echo as possible in the venue.”

The CDD solution serves a number of purposes. As St. Joseph’s is a musical college, a variety of musical ensembles will play through it—from string quartets to full classical set-ups. And as OBA has found with all its CDD installations it has once again delivered a transparent sound.

“As we all know about CDD, it is a beautiful, smooth box, with a nice analog feel to it all wrapped up with a twist of modern technology and crispness! We specify it all the time because it just works.”

To complete the installation, OBA programmed 12” tablets to control the system via an internal network with access points, while ensuring all cabling has been carefully concealed.

The client was equally thrilled with the Martin Audio solution. Said Keiron Orris, IT Network Manager at St Joseph’s College, “Old Barn Audio have designed and supplied a fantastic system for us. They listened to our needs and even though it is a challenging building, they were able to deliver exactly the end result we desired.  Their advice to use the Martin Audio CDD range was perfect; it supplies a warm and professional sound throughout the whole chapel.”