The interesting and relevant parts are a few paragraphs down:
> That natural problem, he said, was exacerbated in the post-Vatican II period by a tendency to install speakers in churches that emit sound simultaneously from a variety of different points, which, he said, means that the acoustical centrality of the altar becomes lost.
> As a result, Carbone said he designed a system in which sound is not projected from all the speakers inside the basilica simultaneously, but passes through roughly 80 speakers with millisecond delays regulated by digital technology, creating the impression of sound originating at the altar and then spreading out through the church.
This cannot be the "the first time such rock-and-roll acoustic engineering has been employed in a church" if it is referring to digital delays. The other weekend I visited a gospel church which used maybe ten dbx DriveRacks, along with the finest mixing console I have ever seen in a house of worship, a top-line analog Soundcraft. The use of a horizontal line array sounds unique to me! James B. Lansing of JBL did a lot of this work long before DSPs became economical, using huge, carefully-engineered tractrix horns. A brilliant and tragically-ended life who contributed enormously to loudspeaker engineering.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 14.9 ms ] thread> That natural problem, he said, was exacerbated in the post-Vatican II period by a tendency to install speakers in churches that emit sound simultaneously from a variety of different points, which, he said, means that the acoustical centrality of the altar becomes lost.
> As a result, Carbone said he designed a system in which sound is not projected from all the speakers inside the basilica simultaneously, but passes through roughly 80 speakers with millisecond delays regulated by digital technology, creating the impression of sound originating at the altar and then spreading out through the church.
https://audioxpress.com/assets/upload/images/1/2021061320392...