BRUNSWICK, Maine — An anticipated audience of 1.5 million people will listen to Pope Francis give an open-air Mass on Saturday outside the Philadelphia Art Museum through a speaker system crafted by a Maine company.
More than 30 custom Terra Speakers were installed several weeks ago in the open-air venue where Saturday’s historic event is to take place.
Terra Speakers President James Banfield said Thursday that he started the company 16 years ago in a two-car garage after the loudspeaker company he worked for in Lewiston moved production overseas.
Three years later, Banfield’s company moved into a facility on Route 1 in Brunswick. He employs five people to manufacture speakers including the CAMM (Custom Audio Manufacturing of Maine) Series, designed for better voice reproduction and “really good, accurate sounding speakers,” he said. “What you say in the mic actually comes out of the speaker itself.”
The speakers are so accurate, he said, that recording and movie studios — including Pixar — use them to make films.
None of the Terra Speakers staff will make the trip to Philadelphia on Saturday to hear the pontiff speak, but Banfield said the event prompted one of the company’s largest orders ever.