Brazil Central Adventist Church Redesigns Sound with Iconyx by Renkus-Heinz

The Central Adventist Church of Curitiba, Brazil is considered an architectural landmark in this thriving capital of the southern Brazilian province of Paraná. In fact, the newly expanded Seventh Day Adventist church is so notable that its recent inauguration was commemorated on a Brazilian postage stamp.

The recently completed remodeling project gave the church a larger, more modern design, with enough seating for 2,200 people. The expansive sanctuary includes a ground floor and three mezzanine levels overlooking an open altar area, backed by a four-story glass wall. Live instrumental and chorale performances are a regular part of church services, and inspirational videos are often viewed on a large projection screen.

Diego Brito, of AMI International, the distributor providing the new sound system, explains that selecting the ideal audio solution for the newly remodeled temple presented some challenges for both AMI and the project's audio installer, Carvie Music.

"The glass back wall creates immense reverberation, and to maintain the altar's aesthetics we weren't able to use the wall for mount support," says Brito. "Nothing can obstruct the view of the altar from any seat in the church."

Originally Carvie Music had planned to install a traditional line array sound system, but soon realized it would require a substantial financial investment in acoustic treatment to achieve desired sound quality. The line array would have also left holes in sound coverage throughout the large sanctuary.

After extensive product research, Carvie decided to use entirely new audio technology for Brazil--an Iconyx IC-R Digitally Steerable Array System by Renkus-Heinz. AMI International is the first Brazilian audio distributor to offer the technology.

"The Iconyx digitally steerable array technology significantly reduced the need for acoustic treatment, and it gives them great musicality with improved voice intelligibility," reports Brito.

Carvie installed two Iconyx sub-woofers inside a wall recess to obtain a true flush mount and maintain the altar aesthetics. Two IC16-R loudspeakers are permanently affixed to custom-designed mounts built directly into the altar. For digital signal processing the church is using RHAON, Renkus-Heinz Audio Operation Networking DSP firmware to control the Iconyx system. Most of the equalization is handled via a Yamaha digital mixer.

"The IC-R system was a great solution for the church because of its digital control capability," Brito reports. "The beam steering is ideal for keeping sound off the walls."