Issue 42 summer 24 web - Flipbook - Page 8
Converting Westminster
Abbey from the prestigious
House of Worship into the
premium performance venue
celebrating his majesty King
Charles III Coronation
Trusted technology partner Whitwam AV Integration, partnered with renowned PA
system supplier Plus 4 Audio and the BBC’s broadcast teams to enable the delivery of a unique
audio-visual production at Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the King’s Coronation
in May 2023.
Whitwam AVI had previously upgraded the Abbey’s
audio-visual systems at the time of the wedding of Prince
William and Kate Middleton in 2011 and were now called
upon to play a crucial role in this year’s historic event
marking King Charles’ ascension to the British throne.
the Abbey would have to be transformed into a
performance venue.”
The original Yamaha control system was replaced with a
Q-SYS signal processing platform, providing superior
control capability, better stability, and the potential to
assign multiple channels of audio and video to multiple
zones. Additional fibre cable was installed around the
building for better transmission of Dante audio and high
definition video. All these tasks had to be accomplished
with exceptional empathy for the historic building, a
discipline in which the Whitwam team was able to
demonstrate considerable expertise both in this venue
and in many other ecclesiastical buildings around the UK.
“With an awareness of upcoming state events the Abbey
approached us in 2018 to help stage productions on a far
greater scale than had been previously possible,” said
Whitwam AVI director Andrew Pymm. “The existing
sound and video systems were primarily designed to
operate in a daily house of worship format, so the updated
facilities had to be capable of higher quality, production
sound and vision for an event as large as a Coronation Above, Westminster Abbey
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