Church AV Systems Price Guide
One of the biggest questions you will have when first looking at a new audio-visual system for your church is the cost. This is because you will need to agree on a budget with the PCC or church leadership and then possibly apply for grants or look to the congregation to help with fundraising for the project.
Giving accurate pricing is very difficult because of the unique challenges each church presents, which means no two quotations we send out are ever exactly the same. As a general rule though, we can give price brackets which your system may fall into depending on which boxes you need to tick.
For example, if your church building is relatively modern, then this will likely make running cables and securing equipment to the wall easier, which will reduce the amount of time that the installation should take. On the other hand, if your church is listed, then we will have to come up with more creative solutions to mount loudspeakers, projectors and other equipment in place, as fixing will need to have as minimal impact as possible on the fabric of the building.
It also might be that we don’t quite cover everything you are looking for; having an engineer at the disposal to send out to you the same or the next day if you are a reasonable distance away from us probably won’t be possible, because we are only a small team, as an example. Or it might be that our proposed system is sadly too expensive for you. Either way, hopefully after reading this page you will have a much clearer idea of not only the cost of an installation with us, but also if we are the right fit for each other.
Firstly, it’s important to list the main factors which are going to have the biggest impact on the cost of the installation:
Your Location
We are based in Exeter, Devon, in the South-West of the UK. We are happy to travel across the South, into South London and up as far North as the Birmingham area, the West Midlands and Cotswolds, as well as covering South Wales. We have recently completed installations in Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, and Hampshire. You can find a link to the map of our clients here.
Church size
As a general rule, the larger your church is, the bigger the list of equipment will be in order to successfully deliver the sound, visual or streaming system you are looking for. Think of it the same as you would if you were painting a room in your house; the larger the room is, the more paint you need, which will subsequently increase the cost of decorating that room.
Complexity of requirements
This sounds obvious, but people are often unaware that sometimes, the phrase “we want it to be as simple as possible to operate” actually necessitates additional equipment and time spent by our engineers customising and programming to make the simple interaction possible. A relatable example might come from looking at something many of us use every day; our car. If we want cruise control to make it easier to drive on the motorway, then that will be an additional cost. If we want to be able to press a button and the car park itself in a tricky parking space, then we will have to pay extra.
Custom solutions
Sometimes, churches and historic buildings present challenges that mean we have to think outside the box to come up with a solution. An example of this is our swing-out screen arm, which you can see here. These complex solutions require a lot of time and engineering, which will increase the installation cost.
How we’ve helped
Now that you know the key factors affecting the price of an installation, here are some rough guidelines to give you an idea of the figures you need to consider before continuing on your journey to a new audio-visual system.
Specific Pricing:
Sound
Sound systems can come in all shapes and sizes and were the first type of AV equipment to be installed in churches and heritage buildings. A huge factor in the cost of a new sound system is whether you need the ability to run a live band through it, which requires a step up in the type of loudspeaker we will select due to the requirements of live instruments, especially bass guitars. Subsequently, larger power amplifiers will be needed and a higher standard of mixing console will also be required.
If you only require a speech and background music system, then depending on the size of your church, you can expect to pay around £7,000 – £9,000.
Churches with a regular requirement for live band reproduction will need to spend between £12,000 – £16,000 to get a system capable of accurate and full-range music.
Projection/Visual
This type of audio-visual installation is usually the most expensive, due to the cost of the various equipment needed to make the system work effectively, but also because of the cabling requirements which are usually fairly substantial.
Wherever possible, we will use projection as this gives the best result; a single projection screen can be seen by far more people than a flatscreen display due to the larger size. We can also find ways to mount the projector and screen that will make them as unobtrusive as possible, such as our winch screen method which lifts the screen up into the chancel arch when not in use.
For an installation using standard equipment, the price would be around £12,000 – £14,000. This figure will increase to between £15,000 and £20,000 when a more complex method of projection screen deployment is required.
Having a system comprising of multiple screens mounted around the church, often using metal strapping on columns to avoid disturbing the fabric of the building, is also an option where projection is not feasible. Screens are usually a more common choice in newer buildings, where having screens visible is not an issue.
Systems using multiple flatscreen displays range massively in price but will be anywhere between £10,000 to £18,000 depending on the number of screens and complexity of the video distribution to each of them.
Live Streaming
Live streaming has become a huge part of the audio-visual setup within churches since the Coronavirus pandemic first hit in 2020 and the value it brings has continued even since lockdowns and social distancing have become a thing of the past.
Generally, church live streaming installations consist of at least one Pan, Tilt, Zoom (PTZ) camera, at least one laptop input and potentially a fixed camera to give a different angle. A compact production switcher will be included to stream directly to YouTube, Facebook or Zoom and our custom control interface will handle all the camera control, input switching and can control other devices such as projectors too.
A typical live streaming system with one PTZ camera will cost roughly £6,000 – £8,000. This will increase to over £10,000 when additional cameras are added and if multiple outputs are required to feed the church visual system as well as the live stream.
Acoustic Treatment
Lots of church buildings have wonderful acoustics for choirs and concerts, but this becomes unhelpful when trying to understand speech. Even with the aid of sound systems, if the church has a large amount of echo, loudspeakers may actually exacerbate rather than resolve the problem. Therefore, some buildings will need to be treated with acoustic panels to lower the reverberation time (the time it takes for a sound to dissipate to an inaudible level) which will then make it much easier to hear speech.
The great thing about acoustic treatment is that there is a huge range of shapes, sizes and colours of acoustic panels, which allows us to choose a style that is going to perform the role of bringing down the amount of echo, but which will also not impact the aesthetics of the church.
A typical acoustic panel installation will cost between £4,000 and £7,000, depending on the size of the space and the amount of reverberation. However, for full acoustic treatment of a large church with a high amount of echo, you are looking more towards the £15,000 price point.
Induction / Hearing Loops
Due to an ageing population, an increasing number of people are wearing hearing aids to compensate for hearing loss. The level of hearing loss with people wearing aids varies, but even slight hearing loss at key frequencies can cause individuals to have difficulty understanding in busy environments.
Induction loops are effective in churches because they allow the hearing aid wearers to have a direct feed from the sound system, eliminating the other noise happening around them. We have a handy guide which explains hearing loops in more detail here.
The simplest way of providing an induction loop in a church space is to run a cable around the perimeter of the nave, encompassing the congregation area. An amplifier sends a current around this cable which creates a magnetic field inside the cable loop, which can be picked up by the coil inside a hearing aid.
Usually, installing an induction loop system is quite quick providing that the cable route is not littered with too many obstacles. Therefore, the cost of a hearing loop installation would be between £2,000 and £4,000 if done as a separate project. However, hearing loop systems need to be connected to a wider sound system to function, so are generally installed at the same time, which will allow the cost to be closer to the bottom of this price bracket.
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