Smith, Fause & McDonald, Inc.

SFMI has provided acoustical, sound systems, media production and communications systems infrastructure design for a dozens of churches, temples, cathedrals, chapels, and supporting teaching and administrative facilities.

The links buttons to the left provide an overview of projects grouped as Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, Non-Denominational and Protestant project types.

The St. James Cathedral project is described below as a feature example of the innovative work SFMI can bring to challenging worship projects. Saint James Cathedral

Seattle, Washington

Design of Sound Systems for 1020 seat Landmark Cathedral

SFMI Scope of Services: Design of a new sound system in response to the Archdiocese desire to deliver high speech intelligibility with minimum visual intrusion.

Project Description

A major interior renovation of the Cathedral was conducted in 1994 for liturgical purposes including the relocation of the altar to the center of the Nave crossing which is located underneath a huge Dome with an opening in the center for light.

The renovation also included introducing multiform seating, as well as raising the room reverberation time to four seconds at midband to provide a suitable setting for choral and organ performance. The resulting long reverberation design challenged sound system designers to acheive intelligible speech without leaving a visible impact on the interior. Most designers the Archdiocese approached wanted to implement a conventional cluster of speakers hung downward from the dome.

Instead, SFMI developed an outstanding and a unique "stealth" design that accommodates multi-source sound reinforcement of speech and music ministry with directional realism from multiple source locations with no intrusion to the Dome. Small loudspeakers are hidden in harmony with the architecture.

The system accommodates integrated automatic functions that allow the non-technical staff of the Cathedral operate the sound system with ease. All audio signal processing is performed in the digital domain.

The original 1994 sound system was the third Peavey MediaMatrix® system placed in service worldwide. The system hardware included beta digital signal processing cards that remained in active service for more than eight years. The complexity and subtlety of what was achieved by Ken Fause's design motivated Peavey to use the design file in their national designer training seminars for years after.

In 2002, SFMI re-engineered the software structure to incorporate improvements functionality made possible by advances in the MediaMatrix® environment and oversaw the replacement of the original beta processing cards with their 3rd generation production replacements.

Client: The Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle

Original Project Cost: Total: $8 million, SFMI portion: $100,000