Bristol Cathedral

This is a great and unique project, where the responsibility that designers and installers had to bring 21st century technology to these historic spaces is immense.

Such a prestigious building requires a very sympathetic approach both in terms of design and installation, and NEXO’s ID Series has once again proven itself to be the perfect choice, bringing with it class leading technical capabilities in a form factor that is not only unobtrusive but also aesthetically pleasing.

The standard of installation that has been carried out by Enlightened is exemplary and a real credit to their hard work and expertise.

The bulk of the system comprises 32 of NEXO’s ground-breaking ID84 column speakers, mainly concentrated in the nave, with similarly voiced, ultra-compact ID14s nestled in the stonework under the pulpit, in the Eastern Lady Chapel and in other areas of the Cathedral.

“We really like the ID Series for a lot of reasons” says Head of Installations Henry Parr. “It’s a good format, it has a lot of flexible options in terms of rigging and mounting, and important for us is that the ID84 has the right visual profile for the installation. In a Grade 1 listed building, it’ s very, very important that the system not only sounds good, but also looks right.”

To that end, all cabinets feature a custom RAL paint finish to match the colour of the stone columns upon which they’re mounted. However, such attention to the details of ensuring a low visual impact doesn’t stop there, as Henry explains.

“All the speaker brackets and all the cabling have been custom coloured as well. We used a coloured, braided sleeving to go over the cabling, so we didn’t need to worry about what colour the cable itself was, whether that’ s black, grey, orange, whatever.”

The key thing for Enlightened was intelligibility and, working with the NEXO Engineering Support Team, they found that NEXO was going to provide very, very similar results to a system significantly more expensive. This freed up a significant part of the budget to produce a better result using more expensive, higher quality microphones, better processing, and to install more infrastructure for future-proofing on other projects.

Working in an historic, Grade 1 listed building of course presents a unique set of challenges to sound system installers.

“We’re a busy building with three services a day and lots of different things going on” explains Ben Silvey, Chief Operating Officer who is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Cathedral including finance, fabric, events, HR and health and safety.

“This is also an historic, ancient and nationally significant building, so we take very special care of the fabric of it. Where we put cables, where we drill holes and what things look like are really, really important to us.

“And we work very closely with our Cathedral Architect and our Fabric Commission, and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England to make sure that what we’ re doing works for the building. Enlightened were a brilliant partner on the project because they really understood the nature of our building.”

“We’ve worked very closely with the cathedral for the last 12 months, looking through extensive site visits to find the best routes for cables, often using existing cable routes in the main heating trench around the nave” says Henry, continuing the theme.

“Of all the seven miles of cable in the system, there’s only a couple of hundred metres that are actually visible.”

“There’ s a whole variety of events and services and concerts that happen here, and it’s really important that people are both heard and can hear” says the Revd Canon Jonnie Parkin, Canon Missioner, ahead of an Evensong service at the Cathedral.

“The new speakers have got a really good, high-quality sound. They’re clear, but they’re also very unobtrusive. The design, the shape and the shade blend into the cathedral architecture really well.”