Historic St. Joseph’s Cathedral is Reborn with Iconyx
September 14, 2020
Sioux Falls, SD | October, 2011 – Originally constructed in 1919, St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Sioux Falls, SD recently put the finishing touches on a decade-long restoration project. Totaling more than $16 million, the extensive renovation and restoration process of the majestic church was overseen by acclaimed architect Duncan G. Stroik.
Intrinsic to the project was replacing the church’s 25 year-old sound system. Serving as Mother Church to the Diocese, as well as parish church for Sioux Falls and other surrounding parishes, St. Joseph’s masses are well attended by hundreds of parishioners. The new sound system had to provide high speech intelligibility and crystal clear sound to every seat in the house.
The project proved quite challenging, according to Peter Borchard of MuSonics Audio. MuSonics has designed audio solutions for many large cathedrals across the country.
“The church has a lot of reflective surfaces that resulted in a six second reverberation time, making it one of the more reverberant in the US and creating significant intelligibility issues,” reports Borchard.
The historic cathedral is known for its magnificent architecture featuring imported Italian marble floors and columns, massive arched ceilings, and huge stained glass windows. It was vital to St. Joseph’s that the new audio system blend aesthetically so as not to diminish the visual impact of the church’s stunning architecture. “Needless to say, it was critical that the new sound system would in no way interfere with the church’s aesthetics,” says Borchard.
An Iconyx high performance digitally steerable array system by Renkus-Heinz proved to be the perfect audio solution for the cathedral.
The system, installed by Brookings, SD-based Audio Connections, used a combination of Iconyx loudspeakers – two IC32-R, two IC24-R and six IC8-R loudspeakers – wall-mounted throughout the cathedral. Iconyx uses Renkus-Heinz’s steerable multiple beam technology to provide full even coverage throughout the venue. The slim, low-profile column loudspeakers are custom painted to match the cathedral walls, rendering them almost invisible.
RHAON DSP controls the loudspeakers. “RHAON is great because you plug into the network in one place and you can control and monitor all the speakers. You don’t have the normal hassle of running around plugging in to various pieces of equipment,” explains Borchard.
“The sound quality of the Iconyx loudspeakers is superb, and the color matching and mounting is exemplary,” says Borchard. “The cathedral is a showcase.”
Consultant : Peter Bourchard, MuSonics www.MuSonics.org
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.