St Mary’s Cathedral is a difficult acoustic environment – six second reverb time is a long time in anyone’s language.
The P.A. People installed their first system in St Mary’s over 20 years ago. In 1997 the Cathedral commissioned a new system as part of a National Trust upgrade to the entire building. The resultant sound system, using the latest digital signal processing technology is a tribute to the collaboration of Arup and The P.A. People.
The system is centred around a large Peavey Media Matrix fed from Creative Audio MP405 Remote Controlled Microphone preamplifiers. The outputs from the Media Matrix are then fed to two discrete speaker systems: the speech reinforcement system comprising 67 Creative Audio DCS 001 Beam Steered DSP Controlled column cabinets mounted to the stone columns and a music system consisting of 16 Matrix boxes mounted in the triforia. The entire system is controlled by an extensive AMX Control System featuring three colour touch screens. The system also includes a ConcertCom intercom system and extensive playback and record capability.
Most recently The P.A. People installed Hearing Loops as part of the upgrade to the building.
