Community solves intelligibility at Yunus Emre Camii
Published: WORSHIP
BELGUIM: Yunus Emre Camii, the largest Turkish mosque in Belgium, attracts up to 1,000 people from the local Turkish, Italian and Greek communities for its Friday services. According to the management, the original sound system in use ‘had never served its purpose’ having been unreliable and plagued by poor intelligibility, while the microphones in use picked up and transmitted noise during services. To resolve these issues, Yunus Emre asked several companies to quote for a new system and the project for design and installation was awarded to Hifi Center Herteleer.
‘The budget was tight and we were the most expensive,’ recalled Kristof Broux of Hifi Center Hertelee. ‘So to convince them of our ability to deliver the best audio solution in such a large and acoustically difficult building we arranged a demonstration of the loudspeakers and microphones on site.
‘The entire floor of the mosque is covered with thick woollen carpet, so floor reflections are reduced but the domed ceiling creates a tremendous echo, far greater than I’ve heard in any church before,’ he explained. ‘The solution was to use loudspeakers that could cover such a large area but with such tightly controlled vertical dispersion that no sound was directed into the dome. We chose Community’s Entasys, as it met these parameters perfectly, and is well proven for its excellent intelligibility.’
Hifi Center Hertelee installed two Entasys full-range column line-array for the mosque’s main area, with one pair of C Series CS4s providing delay fill at the back. A further four I/O5 loudspeakers cover the area for women only and four all-weather R.25 loudspeakers are used in the minaret to provide 360-degree coverage outside for the call to prayer. Nine Clockaudio microphones connect to a Behringer mixer, with J B Systems amplifiers powering the internal loudspeakers and a larger Crown amplifier powering the R.25s. DSP is handled by a dbx DriveRack PA2 loudspeaker management system.
‘The new system has transformed the sound quality in the mosque,’ concluded Mr Broux. ‘Whether the imam is praying softly, or singing out loud, the intelligibility and coverage throughout is simply superb.’