Outline
Holy Trinity church Bracknell is one of the few remaining listed buildings in Bracknell. Consecrated in 1851 to serve the anticipated growth of the hamlet around Bracknell High Street with the coming of the railway, the church has remained a constant as the town has evolved from a Victorian market town, to a 1960s New Town, into the modern redevelopment of more recent years.
CGA Integration was approached by Fabio Marques, Music Director at Holy Trinity, to develop the sound for worship in the church. The church wanted to support both traditional worship, including choirs and organ, but also have the facilities to host live music, worship bands and regular services involving local schools.
Challenges
The church had limited funds available to carry out this much needed work. This was further compounded when during the initial survey of the existing sound system, CGA Integration identified that most of the existing cabling had been damaged by historical rodent activity.
As a result, the budget available for the project had to be reprioritised to allow for CGA Integration to install new cables for all speaker runs and the induction loop. These were all sheathed in either metal conduit or anti-rodent sleeving, to ensure that the new sound system is more resilient should rodents return.
Technical
To support the church’s budgetary requirements, CGA Integration suggested a phased approach to the work:
Phase 1 – Survey of the existing sound system.
Phase 2 – Replacing the sound system processor and microphones to ensure all sound is captured correctly.
Phase 3 – Upgrading the amplifiers.
Phase 4 – New speakers*
* Phase 4 has not yet been implemented, as carrying out phases 1-3 has significantly improved the sound.
CGA consolidated all sound system equipment into the existing equipment rack, and ran out new protected cables to all speakers, input sockets, the induction loop, and radio microphone aerials.
To help the available budget, the church supplied volunteers to lift the existing staging and floor grills, to enable CGA Integration to work as efficiently as possible, and focus on delivering their areas of expertise to the project. CGA Integration was also able to reuse an Automix unit that had become redundant at another local church, which helped stretch the available monies as far as possible.
New licensed radio microphones were fitted, (2 lapel and 1 handheld), in addition to a new wired lectern microphone. Floor sockets were rewired and tested to future proof the sound system, enabling additional microphones or a pulpit microphone to be used if required.
A digital sound processor was fitted with iPad control, to mix the inputs from the Automix unit and the church’s existing live sound mixer. This allows the church team to be in full control from any location within the church.
CGA Integration also used the digital processor to optimise the sound through all of the existing speakers and locations. Currently the church has two different brands and three different sizes of speaker. CGA Integration equalised and time aligned these to make the best of the existing hardware, until budget becomes available to upgrade the speakers.
Response
Fabio Marques – Music Director at Holy Trinity Bracknell commented; “CGA has greatly helped us to improve the sound system we have, which has made a real difference to how we can worship together here at Holy Trinity. They have been so mindful of our budgetary constraints, and have worked hard to deliver a great sound despite all the issues they have faced.”
Russell Goodburn – Church Warden at Holy Trinity Bracknell added; “the new digital processor and iPad control has made it so much easier to operate the sound system, and get it to sound its best, however we are worshipping.”
