Immaculate Conception, Marrero, LA

The Sound Source recently had the pleasure of working with Fr. Warren Cooper, Pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Marrero, LA.  Due to damage from Hurricane Katrina, a new sound system was installed in the church.  The new system still didn’t seem to perform to Fr. Cooper’s expectations.  Being still relatively new,  Fr. Cooper asked us to come in and see if there was anything that we could do to improve the quality and intelligibility of the system that was already in place.

After attending several masses, Tim came up with a plan for the church that would improve the existing system.  First, our crew spent two short days in the church cleaning up cabling, terminating connections, and tuning and timing the system.  Once that step was completed, Tim attended mass several more times to make sure that the changes were evident.   Our plan also suggested adding a additional speakers in areas that we felt were not included in the original install.  These would help to make the system complete.  One key to adding to the existing speakers would be the new ones would have to match perfectly, both in color and sound quality.

After a few weeks, the church decided to move forward on the installation of the additional speakers.  Our plan also included adding a small audio monitor on the altar for the priests and deacons to hear others more clearly.  A few other upgrades to be done were to add a CDR Recorder, upgrading the system processors, as well as a few other small projects the church team felt they needed.

Once everything was completed, Tim attended mass a few more times to make sure that all was good.  We have received several positive complements from the parishioners, as well as from Church staff.

TimK goes on to say….

“Immaculate Conception’s problems are a great example that not every system requires a total removal and reinstallation.  We took a good existing system and made it better.  Our goal was not to change the visual impact of what was there, but to increase the intelligibility to a level no-one has ever experienced before.  The best example of this was an elderly man came up to me after mass and told me that he had been attending mass at Immaculate Conception for a very long time.  He said he always struggled to hear what the priests were saying.  He went on to say that he heard every word perfectly for the first time in 30 years.  That makes it all worth it for me!!”