Churchgoers see the world with Bag End

The Publishing House portion of The First Church of Christ, Scientist’s Mother Church recently underwent renovations, including new permanent exhibits and a Welcome Hall to the Visitor Center. “The Church wanted everything done right with the sound of the visitor experience” said Kevin Peterson, senior acoustic/audio consultant for SH Acoustics of Stamford, Connecticut. Luci Creative was hired to create the exhibit “How do you see the World?” Luci partnered with Creative Technology Group, SH Acoustics (SHA), and Bag End Loudspeakers on the AV system design, implementation and installation.

Nine custom Bag End T33-SHV1 column arrays were installed in the Welcome Hall. The speakers had to fit precisely on existing stone columns, which surround the room, and provide balanced sound down to 100Hz. “Our research did not find any off-the-shelf column array that would meet the dimensional and performance specs required, so we approached Bag End to develop a custom solution,” explained Peterson. SHA has previously worked with Bag End on the development of custom sized and shaped IPS subwoofers to fit in a variety of unique spaces within dozens of its museum exhibit projects.

The column array speakers were designed with eight woofers and a tweeter for vertical directivity control. SHA’s audio design distributed two array speakers on each of three walls, and three on the fourth. This allowed for a fully immersive experience with a flexible setup that could be instantly reconfigured via the DSP. The room was set up for two primary uses. First an originally composed two-hour musical soundscape by Winikur Productions plays through the arrays and an overhead distribution of speakers and subwoofers. In addition, regular events are held with a platform situated on one of two sides of the room. All nine arrays were calibrated by SHA principal, Steve Haas. This aimed to deliver even sound throughout the Welcome Hall that localises to the presenters at the front in either of the two physical setups.

Next, you walk through one of Boston’s historic landmarks, the “Mappariumtm Experience”. There were unique acoustical challenges in this three story, stained glass, walk-through, inside-out, globe of the world. It was all glass, except for the doors and bridge. In addition, it was almost completely spherical. A 10-minute audio narration explores the history of the world and Christian Science. The sound had to reach the ears of a 7ft person down to that of a three foot tall person, anywhere along the bridge. As a result, everyone could enjoy the experience, but without spreading the sound all over where the highly focused acoustical surfaces would wreak havoc on the intelligibility of speech. Two custom Bag End TS33-SHV2 column arrays were used for the space. They were mounted horizontally, on either end of the room, above the doors and engineered to match the width of the bridge where people gathered.

“We are thrilled with the outcome of the revamped sound in the Mappariumtm and have received so many pleasantly-surprised reactions from both the clients and visitors,” said Peterson.

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