Church

Bern, Swiss

Berner Münster Church has installed a new Pan Acoustics audio system to reduce reverb times in the medieval church. The church was dedicated to St. Vincent of Saragossa in the late Middle Ages, and is the largest late-medieval church in Switzerland. It was completed in the 19th century after the emergence of Historicism and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1983.

The audio system dates back to the 1980s and needed to be completely replaced to reduce the six second reverberation time of the old system. The target for the new system was 0.6 seconds with an emphasis on intelligibility in speech and music. To achieve this Berne-based installers Kilchenmann AG were awarded the contract.

They fitted 33 passive Pan Beam PB 8-15 slim loudspeakers due to their aesthetics as well as performance. In addition they also have wide coverage of the audience area (140°) and offer versatile mounting options, weighing just 5kg.

The signal processing and distribution was handled by Symetrix DSP’s used with Dante modules.

The system can be controlled from two locations. The requirement here was to achieve multiple defaults, switch zones and regulate input and output volume. Kilchenmann turned to Symetrix and programmed SymVue surfaces for the corresponding touchscreen panels.