Saint John's Armenian Apostolic Church, San Francisco

St. John's is on a small street under Sutro Tower. Sutro Tower is a huge (977 feet) radio, television and cell phone relay station. There's not much there except a park, a firehouse and the Church. It's pretty and nice. The church itself is old world architecture and has excellent acoustics. The first thing they requested was wireless mics and being so close to the Sutro Tower I wasn't sure how that would work out. It turned out surprisingly well. My only guess is that they are below the vertical pattern? Having a space that was sized and treated correctly, it didn't take much to have it sound great. A QSC CX1102 amplifier and 2 Community SLS915's on Omnimount brackets did the trick. I finished it off with a small rack, a Monster power conditioner/ sequencer, a Rane MLM82a mic/line mixer and a Rane RPM2 digital processor. The wireless are Shure ULXP's with the Countryman E6 mics. The Rane MLM82a is a very nice, single rack space mixer that is great for installs because it doesn't have a lot of knobs (knobs confuse people) and sounds good. You wouldn't want to use it for rock as the mic pre's clip at +10dB, but for small installs it's perfect. MAP on it is $419 so it's certainly affordable. It has 4 XLR mic inputs, 4 balanced stereo inputs and 2 XLR balanced outputs. The mic inputs have global phantom and are switchable to line. There's no auxes or EQ. The Rane RPM2 is Rane's lowest price DSP ($639 MAP). It does everything you need if you only need a 2x2. This was the first job I tried out using the RPM wirelessly. I picked up a cheap wireless link and pci card and looked through Rane's instructions. It looked complicated, so I just plugged everything in and turned it on. Everything worked! I was able to sit in the back middle of the church with my TEF analyzer and laptop and really listen to how the system sounded. It's rare when a job finishes that one has the time to actually tweak it to one's desire. Usually, it's pack it up, have to get out. Not at St. John's. I was able to place some very narrow, 1/12th of an octave cuts a only a dB or so and really get it perfect. That was so nice. The parametric EQ's on the Rane work very well and the automatic feedback suppression module is excellent. As you can see, St. John's got a first rate system for very little money. The system is very clean and will last a long time. There are no knobs for anyone to twiddle. I did go back to their service on Sunday and it was a packed house. As I opened the vestibule doors to go in, I heard the pastor, standing in the middle of the altar, loud and clear. 

After the church was so pleased by our work, they asked us to upgrade their parish hall. We used a pair of Community SLS920s custom painted to match the decor.