St Peter’s Church in Evercreech, Somerset, has upgraded its 25-year-old sound system with Amina’s latest Sapphire Distributed Mode Loudspeaker (DML) technology, improving speech clarity and sound coverage while preserving the character of the historic building.
When St Peter’s Church first invested in Amina loudspeakers over 25 years ago, the goal was simple: deliver clear, natural sound throughout the church without compromising the character of the historic building.
The original church sound system, installed by Alive Church Systems, used Amina speaker panels for live music, music playback and speech reinforcement. For more than two decades, the system served the church faithfully, helping congregations enjoy everything from traditional services to contemporary worship events.
Earlier this year, the church decided it was time for an upgrade. Working once again with Chris Shaw, Managing Director of Alive Church Systems, the church replaced its original Amina panels with the latest generation Amina Sapphire, DML speakers, bringing modern Distributed Mode Loudspeaker (DML) technology into a building with centuries of history.
“The congregation have noticed the difference themselves,” explains Chris. “People have commented on how much clearer and more natural everything sounds during services.”
For many audio installations, particularly in heritage buildings, achieving speech intelligibility and even sound coverage can be a challenge. Churches are often characterised by high ceilings, reflective stone surfaces and long reverberation times, all of which can make conventional loudspeaker systems difficult to optimise.
Unlike conventional cone loudspeakers that project sound in a relatively narrow pattern, Amina Sapphire panels deliver wide and even dispersion. Sound is spread more naturally throughout the space, helping ensure that everyone hears clearly, whether seated at the front, middle or rear of the church. The result is improved intelligibility for spoken word, greater clarity for music and a more consistent listening experience across the entire congregation.
Another significant benefit of the Amina Sapphire upgrade has been the increased gain-before-feedback available for microphones. Feedback is one of the most common audio challenges in churches, where microphones, loudspeakers and reflective architectural surfaces can easily combine to create sudden unwanted whistles, ringing or howling.
Thanks to Amina’s Distributed Mode Loudspeaker (DML) technology, sound is dispersed naturally and evenly throughout the space rather than being projected as a concentrated beam from a conventional loudspeaker. This reduces the amount of direct acoustic energy returning to microphones and helps minimise the conditions that typically cause feedback.
The result is a system that can operate at higher speech levels with greater clarity and significantly less risk of feedback, providing confidence for clergy, readers, musicians and guest speakers alike.
In a reverberant historic building such as St Peter’s, this improved gain-before-feedback performance helps ensure that speech remains clear and intelligible throughout the church, without the distraction of unwanted audio artefacts during services.
What’s particularly interesting about the St Peter’s project is that the speakers are not installed in the way most people would typically expect from Amina. Amina DML speakers are often plastered seamlessly into walls or ceilings, becoming completely invisible once decorated. However, in a 16th-century church, preserving the historic fabric of the building was paramount, making a fully invisible installation impractical. Instead, the new Sapphire panels were mounted on specially designed custom standoffs.
The broad, room-filling dispersion characteristics help overcome challenges commonly found in acoustically hard spaces, reducing the localisation often associated with conventional loudspeakers and creating a more natural listening environment.