St James Church is Packing a New PA in Pakenham

St James Anglican Church in Pakenham has a long and active history dating back to 1884. The church has been a great contributor to the local community and has even been visited by a past prime minister. Numerous community callings cover the full project spectrum from youth community to aged parishioners, so the church needs to be adaptable both physically and in human resource terms.

The PA system must deliver both good band and spoken word into a difficult acoustic environment

When The Reverend Jason Hobba and the church decided it was time for a sound system upgrade, the eternal challenge of "the best results at an affordable price" was high on the priority list. The list of alternatives is large but there’s not many companies that can deal with the complexities of house of worship acoustics well, and this is where John Keane from ABH Commercial enters the picture.

Factoring in all the potentially competing requirements, John came up with a design solution including the Quest Engineering HPI system. The HPI-110 is specifically designed to deal with the reverberant spaces often found in churches. Ably assisted by Ron Simmons from Sound Constructions, a system to "fit the bill" was conceived and once the go ahead was given, the system was installed in a matter of a few hours.

John and Ron from ABH installing the system

As for the results? Here is a Quote from Rev Jason on the first outing for the system.

The look on the muso's and singers' faces last night when they heard the system was priceless - like kids at Christmas (and I was only playing my Maton through it when they arrived - no other music). None of them really know the technical side of what a good set of speakers is - but when they heard them, and when they walked around the whole church ... and continued to hear them at every spot they walked, they were overwhelmed.

The compact QM600S sub bass works well in this environment to extend the range of the system

They all said last night, "We've been waiting for 10years for something like this. That speaks for itself, really".

The sound system is not physically large and the church area is covered by just two HPI-110 elements in a centre cluster array and a single QM series sub bass powered by a Quest QA3004 amplifier.

Sales and installation by AllansBilly Hydes and Sound Constructions.

A small array covers a large area