JBL technology solves the audio problems of Barbastro's cult building

An Intellivox DS380 column has been the solution chosen to respond to the problems presented by the church of San Francisco de Asís in Barbastro, a cult site of complex architectural and acoustic features.

The parish church of San Francisco de Asís in Barbastro (Huesca) has installed a new sound system, specifically designed for a building of its characteristics. It is a temple close to 40 meters long, with vaulted ceilings of ribbed of some 15 meters high, marble floors and, practically, does not have furniture, which makes the reverberation inside very high.

It is a space in which the intelligibility of the word has been strongly compromised over the years.. “The church had a distributed sound system composed of 10 100V in-line acoustic columns, which only provided acceptable intelligibility in the areas in front of them” comments Juan Viader, Director of Scale, company responsible for the sound project of the church.

With the aim of improving and homogenizing the levels of intelligibility throughout the surface of the temple, the old sound system was replaced by a new one. Scale and Earpro studied the space and designed a new solution consisting of an Intellivox DS380 loudspeaker JBL Professional, which has been installed at one of the lateral ends of the apse.

With their 20 speakers 4 custom-designed inches and its class D internal amplifier of 16 canals, Intellivox DS380 box provides smooth, clear sound at up to a distance of up to 45 metre.

“The installation work has been very simple, because when replacing the 10 pre-existing columns by a single, you only need a gutter led to the JBL Intellivox DS380, through which we have taken the power and signal cables. The result has been a perfect uniformity of sound pressure. New system provides intelligible and powerful sound. In addition, the visual impact of the new installation is minimal, since the spine goes virtually unnoticed”, explains Juan Viader.

El sistema de sonido también incorpora una solución de microfonía de Shure compuesta por 3 micrófonos de cuello de cisne Centraverse CVG12RS-B/C (located in the ambon, the altar and the see) and a BLX24RE/SM58 wireless system.

The mixing of these signals is done automatically by means of a Shure SCM820 mixer whose output, along with those of musical sources, enters in turn to a BSS BLU50 processor.

This processor has been programmed with 3 different presets to optimize the sound according to different levels of influx of public to religious services and that the priest can select them through a BSS BLU-3 panel. The output of the BSS BLU50 is the one that powers the JBL Intellivox DS380 self-powered column, protagonist of this installation.

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