St. Michael is one of the oldest churches in Chicago, with a structure that needed major repairs after the Chicago fire.

Like other churches of its era, St. Michael was not designed for amplified sound, and speech intelligibility has long been a problem. Even an all-new (and expensive) sound system installed in the late 1990s by another sound contractor failed to solve the problem.

CAVCOMM stepped into the fray in 2006, replacing the existing loudspeakers with a single Duran Intellivox steerable line array for all reinforcement of the spoken word (most visible in photo #3, just to the left of the side altar).

This affordable, compact system, measuring just 5.3” wide by about 14’ tall, fills the sanctuary with crisp, clean, accurate and loud sound from microphones in the pulpit and a smaller lectern plus wireless mics that priests and lay ministers carry or wear.

Since the direction of the sound coming from the array is highly steerable, CAVCOMM engineers placed it and tuned it so that nearly all of the sound pressure falls on congregation members, not on the highly-reflective plaster walls. It was the reverb from the walls that caused the intelligibility problem, and so redirecting the sound away from the walls has proven highly effective