REA SOUND’S HOLY TRINITY OF MARTIN AUDIO CHURCH INSTALLATIONS
No Martin Audio dealer partnership has existed longer than that with Irish distributor Rea Sound, which dates back to 1982.
Fast forward 43 years and the system integrators continue to specify permanent Martin Audio solutions in a broad variety of facilities — most notably Houses of Worship.
Three churches in particular demonstrate how Rea Sound have adopted a different approach to suit the needs (and protect the heritage) of the respective buildings.
One of these is St. Finnian’s Church of Ireland in Castlereagh, outside Belfast. States the church’s Mike Johnson, “We’d had our audio system since around 2017-2018. But with Covid came a necessity to stream services, and the rector asked me to put together a package. So I spoke to Rea Sound and very quickly they proposed a system which we installed five or six weeks later.”
Rea Sound director Roger McMullan remembers that the church wanted a discreet sound system, with the speakers set quite high. “That would give us a nice overview of sound coming from both the front and above, which would also tie in with the audio visual system,” he said.
It’s a beautiful listed building, so we had to be sensitive to the aesthetics... and the acoustics, which are exceptional."
It was also one of the first churches in which they had installed Martin Audio’s CDD series. “We used four CDD10s at the front of the church,” he said. “This gave us a nice even coverage of the spoken word throughout. It’s not a particularly long church, and the sound quality produced from CDD10 is exceptional.”
“Working with Rea Sound has been excellent,” concludes Mike Johnston. “We’ve always been able to ring up and get answers to questions. The technical help and the solutions are always good, and when we have problems they are always there to help us.”
Another prominent Rea Sound installation was carried out at St. Mark’s Church of Ireland, a Grade A listed parish church in Dundela. “We looked at a number of suppliers and asked them all to come in and look at the building and the acoustic, and make recommendations as to what would fit the bill,” says the church’s Michael Newman. Rea Sound were the successful bidders and their creative approach, specifying O-Line micro-array, surprised him. “With a traditional system you think of speakers placed around the building but that wasn’t the case. We were somewhat dubious about it at first but [Rea’s] faith has definitely been fulfilled. The sound quality is excellent.”
“We set four hangs of 12 O-Line, two in the centre and one at each side,” recalls Roger McMullan.” There are also CDD5 infills for the choir and CDD5 infill for the room. It’s a beautiful listed building so we not only have to be sensitive of the aesthetics, but also the acoustics, which are exceptional. The church didn’t want a distributed speaker system so O-Line fitted perfectly.
“We were able to fit four hangs at the front of the church above the eye-line and as that’s in stone colour it worked well with the church, while providing exceptional sound quality from front to back.”
At Ballynure Methodist Church the AV systems they have had over the years had varied in quality, and some were fairly primitive, according to the church’s Robert Stokes. “But Rea Sound have kept things moving along, as we had three churches installing at the same time.”
According to Roger McMullan, “Each church was very different but the brief was the same. The control aspect had to be similar in all three churches. The sound system is based on Martin Audio CDD10 at high level again, which takes them away from the congregation’s eyesight and provides even coverage of sound throughout the whole space.
“Since all three churches are limited in terms of technical support, they rely on volunteers to easily position themselves in any church.”
Take a look behind the scenes with Irish distributor Rea Sound at their house off worship installations here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reApNRvQ8eI