Bonding at City Kirken with d&b
Clean lines, four square and solid; look closely at the walls of City Kirken in Arhus, Denmark, and you'll notice the bricklayer has adopted a most unusual bond; one that when viewed from afar produces a striking herringbone pattern pointed toward the heavens. For this modern Church, unusual bonds are a convenient metaphor for all that it does; one of the Church members Peter Rasch is typical of this, for Peter has an unexpected expertise that rendered good service to City Kirken's congregation.
"As you can see from the photos, the church completely renovated the building within which it lives. The main worship room was always intended to bring a fresh modern feel and the church members all agreed that we should employ the equally modern technologies of communication, sound, light and video, but with sensitivity. This is not the place for Iron Maiden, but it is a place where people should be excited by what they see and hear."
The Church Committee sought Rasch's advice, "My career has been in providing audio and communications systems. I worked with Informations Teknik in Copenhagen for some years, and now work with Get Visual, a specialist with particular expertise in video in my home town of Arhus. My primary recommendation was for a d&b audiotechnik PA system; speech is always the first consideration in communication and my professional experience had taught me that d&b is the best."
Rasch arranged for KC Productions, a local system integrator, to make a demonstration; KC's Casey Willie agreed Rasch’s selection, "He too had worked with d&b equipment a lot and didn’t hesitate." Willie called Lars Frederiksen from Alfa Audio, d&b's distributor for Denmark, and between them the two men designed the installation. "Of course the committee were concerned with coverage throughout the room." said Rasch, "but they also wanted to ensure that musically it was as pleasant down on the floor as it was to those people sitting in the balcony."
"This was a great room to work" said Frederiksen. "Eddy Bøgh Brixen, the acoustician Peter brought in, has done a fantastic job. That's always a welcome discovery when designing any system installation. The flexible characteristics of the d&b T-Series proved ideal for the main system. Casey installed a powerful stereo array of T10s to cover the main room, with a single T10P in point source configuration to cover the front centre area. Thus a single loudspeaker replaces the need for front fills and keeps the stage edge much less cluttered. Again, in the interests of clear sightlines, Q subwoofers are positioned in the roof above the beams that support the T loudspeaker arrays."
Rasch was pleased with the outcome. "Lars, Casey, Eddy: they have all done a really good job. For the everyday use of our church hall this has fully met our expectations. Since the installation was completed in February we've had a lot of positive feedback from our church users, and from people visiting here from other churches. The fact it sounds so good has cemented bonds between us and other Christian communities."
