The Bose® RoomMatch® Loudspeaker at Hope Presbyterian Church



Bose® RoomMatch® loudspeakers and PowerMatch® amplifiers offered both the spoken-word intelligibility that the pastor, AV consultant and integrator were looking for, and the musicality that the church’s musicians wanted

Framingham, Massachusetts, February 28, 2013 – Speech intelligibility has become a vital criterion in selecting sound systems in houses of worship, and pastors, consultants and AV systems integrators alike strive diligently to find systems that work best for each particular church. At Hope Presbyterian Church, in Austin, Texas, they included one other group of ears when it came time to select the church’s next sound system: musicians. When the musicians weighed in after several rounds of listening tests, they chose the RoomMatch® loudspeakers from Bose® Professional Systems Division, which, as it turns out, is exactly the same conclusion the pastor, integrator and consultant all came to as well. Austin-based AV consultants, Dickensheets Design Associates, specified a loudspeaker array to cover the desired area composed of three different RoomMatch modules – the RM9010, RM12040, and RM9060 loudspeakers. These were paired with a RoomMatch RMS215 bass loudspeaker, and all were powered by a single Bose PowerMatch® PM8500N amplifier.

Consultant, Ken Dickensheets, arranged for demos of several high-end conventional and line array type speaker systems to take place inside the church. Music Minister, Nick Boltz, also brought in several of the musicians who play each week during services for their opinions. “We were listening for the practical things, like speech intelligibility and dispersion characteristics,” says Dickensheets, referring to himself, the integrator and the church’s lead pastor. “But the musicians were focusing on the aesthetic aspects of the loudspeakers. As it turned out, we all felt the same way about the same loudspeakers – the Bose RoomMatch array modules were the ones we all wanted. They were the only ones that worked for all of the different criteria. We felt that their speech intelligibility was the best, and the musicians found them to be the most musical speakers of all the ones we listened to.”

Installation was completed by Ace Audio Communications, Inc. of Hutto, Texas, which also installed a new FOH console and other equipment for a complete renovation of the church’s sound system.

It turned out to be the first installation of Bose RoomMatch and PowerMatch equipment for Ace Audio Communications, and the experience reinforced what AV Manager, Doug Windle, had heard about the Bose products. “The pattern control of the RoomMatch loudspeakers is very good – we were able to keep the energy off of the walls and keep it focused on the seats throughout the room,” says Windle. “And once we got started, the RoomMatch loudspeakers went up easily and flawlessly – we had the entire array assembled on the floor in less than 20 minutes.” Windle says he expects to be doing more Bose RoomMatch system installations in the future. “People might think of Bose as a consumer brand – they know them for their headphones and home theater systems – but for the RoomMatch and PowerMatch products, they put in an enormous amount of time and effort into research and development, and it shows in their performance. Now, I see integrators watching Bose very closely. They sense that there’s something unique here. And there is.”