QSC and Allen amp Heath firsts at Sungai-Way

The church was looking to revamp its ageing audio system and engaged Cogent Acoustics’ Robert Soo as a consultant to advise on the design and installation for the new FOH loudspeaker system, new stage monitoring system for the musicians, new digital mixer system and its revamped audio infrastructure. The installation was then carried out by local Malaysian system integrator FOH Integration Sdn Bhd.

Sungai-Way was facing a number of audio challenges. Its ageing loudspeaker system provided uneven sound distribution and low quality sound which was partly contributed to by poor quality cables. Added to this there was a very high stage volume from the band using conventional stage instrument amplifiers which made it difficult to create an FOH mix. At front of house, meanwhile, an analogue mixer had insufficient inputs, outputs and signal processing capability to meet the growing demands. Finally, the church also featured a relatively long reverberation time that when coupled with the low quality, low intelligibility and uneven sound distribution further compounded the issues.

The solution designed by Mr Soo consists of a QSC KLA line array system in a left-right configuration of three KLA12 and one KLA181 subwoofer per side. The band monitoring is now via a myMix personal monitoring systems while FOH is now handled via an Allen & Heath GLD-80 small format digital console.

‘The new equipment was selected based on performance as well as cost effectiveness and then carefully designed in to deal with all the shortcomings of the old system,’ explained Mr Soo. ‘Basically they have all that’s required and the system is also expandable to meet future growth needs.’

Planning and co-ordination for the project took a few weeks, but the installation, system tuning, testing and commissioning to user training and handover was a rapid process taking only one week. The major challenge during the project came with the ceiling height. ‘There was a shortage in ceiling height of a few feet needed to fly the complete KLA line array full range with subs at the ideal height and location,’ recalled Mr Soo. ‘So not wanting to compromise on proper sound coverage and distribution, I had to fly the subwoofer beside the line instead. It's not as pretty a sight but it definitely worked and delivered.’

The reverberation time caused the other major challenge in the church. ‘The leadership was not ready to install the acoustic solution as I recommended so in order to avoid further exciting the room I had to be extra careful with how the loudspeakers were positioned, aimed and individually tweaked,’ explained Mr Soo. ‘What made this a little more challenging was the FOH mix position was placed on an elevated platform right at the rear of the hall, so getting adequate sound coverage at the mix position without throwing excessive sound energy to the rear wall required some acrobatic tricks!’

The end result has, reports Mr Soo, been well received by the church. ‘Already at the first service the improvement noticed by the church congregation was a night and day experience,’ he noted. ‘Basically there are no “bad seats” in the house anymore. Everything is crystal clear, and without the stage volume to compete with, sound mixing is now a joy for the sound technicians. With all the on-board processing available on the Allen & Heath GLD-80, all the old analogue signal processing gear was no longer necessary and was removed to create more room at the FOH booth, much to the delight of the A/V crew!’

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