St. Paul the Apostle is a contemporary catholic church. The church has a strong music program with typical instrumentation consisting of guitars, keyboards and some wind instruments. The floor plan is semicircular, with the altar extending out into the seating area, creating a strong sense of community amongst the congregation and good intimacy between all seating areas and the platform area.

There is a significant acoustical conflict in the very responsive acoustical environment needed to best support congregational participation and the need for a controlled acoustical environment for the musicians. We created a unique solution to address this conflict that creates a locally controlled acoustical environment for the musicians that is acoustically coupled to the main volume of the sanctuary through acoustically transparent sections of the walls and ceiling. The ceiling and walls have been designed to create a very responsive acoustical environment by sending strong sound reflections between the various seating areas in the congregation.

An even greater acoustical conflict exists between the ideal acoustical environment for preaching and the live responsive acoustical environment to support congregational participation. This conflict was addressed through a sophisticated sound reinforcement systems design that provides excellent pattern control over a very broad bandwidth. This allows the reinforced sound to be directed only into the sound absorptive seating area, with minimal spill of sound energy onto the very reflective walls and ceiling. The sound systems design was carefully coordinated with the ceiling design so that all of the loudspeakers are out of view.

Two sound systems were designed: one for speech and one for music. The system designed for the music features loudspeakers near the stage to provide localization of the sound to the band and choir area with a 3-way main speaker system providing full range frequency response. The speech system is an automatic system which can be used by the sound technician or easily operated from a computer screen by non-technical church staff for day to day use.

The limited budget required great design ingenuity to achieve an extremely low background noise level to support the highest possible quality worship experience. Package rooftop units are located over the narthex, and simple open-ended slots are incorporated into the ceiling design to provide proper air distribution.