Imperial cathedral in Frankfurt

In the middle of the old town lies the cathedral of St. Bartholomew. The building history of the church began already in the 7th century. From 1356 on, as determined by the Golden Bull of Charles IV, the Roman kings were elected in the cathedral. Between 1562 and 1792, ten imperial coronations took place in the cathedral, but this tradition ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. A fundamental reconstruction during the Romanesque period and brisk building activity during all periods of the Gothic changed the cathedral significantly until the big fire in 1867. With the repair of the war damages from 1948 onwards the cathedral got its present appearance. In its history, the sacred building has never been the cathedral church of a bishop but is under the care of the diocese of Limburg. The secular lord of the house is the city of Frankfurt. Every day guests from all over the world visit the church. Persistent complaints of the church visitors about the bad word comprehensibility in the service gave now the cause for the responsible persons to achieve an improvement of the speech intelligibility in the imperial cathedral as soon as possible. The Seis Akustik Team was commissioned to develop a new audio concept for the cathedral. On the one hand, the new audio system should ensure good speech intelligibility under the difficult acoustic conditions, but on the other hand, it should also meet the high demands of modern church use. Another important concern of the client was to achieve a simple "one-button operation" of the future transmission system. On behalf of the customer, a Seis Acoustics team, led by Ing. Jan Bril, first carried out an acoustic room analysis in the cathedral. Based on the results of the acoustic measurement, simulations were then carried out with "EASE" and subsequently the requirement profile for the technical implementation was created. This then served as a guideline for the selection of suitable loudspeaker arrays and their placement at the determined positions in the room. The subsequent test run of the new transmission technology in the cathedral quickly demonstrated the superiority of the new digital technology and convinced all those involved. The new system was completed in time for the Christmas service and passed the first test.