Temple of sound
Published: WORSHIP
Difficult acoustics troubled the new home of Singapore’s Amitabha Buddhist Society, but Berlino Electronics transformed the temple, writes Richard Lawn
Having recently moved to a six-storey, newly converted building in Singapore’s Geylang neighbourhood, the Amitabha Buddhist Society encountered acoustic difficulties in its new Temple thanks to the building’s t-shaped halls. The echoes and delays that resulted affected each of the Temple’s main worship spaces.
The Society contracted the services of Berlino Electronics to design and install solutions for the problem. ‘Rather than taking place in just one room as normal, worshipping is conducted in several rooms as the building is built up,’ explains Berlino project manager, Andy Heng. ‘As a result, we were required to provide similar A/V solutions on each level. As the rooms are t-shaped, a point source speaker solution was discarded on account of the feedback and distortion created by the tricky room acoustics.’
Instead, twin TOA SR-S4S line array speakers have been installed in each hall, affixed to the walls at a height of 2.5m above the floor. Powered by QSC GX7 amplifiers, the short-throw compact arrays enhance clear speech intelligibility. Each array is equipped with eight 4-inch cone drivers and 24 1-inch balanced dome tweeters, which have been aligned to form a continuous linear sound source. The resultant 10-degrees V x 90-degrees H coverage ensures directivity and even dispersion with Ecler ceiling speakers – powered by a combination of TOA DA-250F 2-channel and DA-250D 4-channel digital amplifiers – adding fills where required.
‘After we installed the line arrays we achieved the desired result,’ confirms Mr Heng. ‘There are no echoes and no delays, which is quite an achievement in such a tricky building.’
Elsewhere, an Allen & Heath GLD80 digital console accepts multiple microphones feeds on each level to output the chanting throughout the building. The wired microphone inputs are fed into a rack mounted AR2412 unit, whilst a GR05, accepting five inputs, performs zone mixing. In addition, there are six channels of Sennheiser ew100 wireless microphone channels at the Temple’s disposal for lead chanting and announcements.
In addition, the Temple’s video system is focused on the activities of the lead monk as the cameras follow him on his trials up and down floors. A number of fixed Panasonic HD cameras are fed to an AW-RP50 remote controller for a Datavideo SE2800 switcher to transport to the fixed screens on each level. A Kramer VS88HD has also been added as a matrix switcher for digital video signals up to HD−SDI.
Finally, the rooftop of the Temple has been installed with four TH-660 reflex horns affixed to TU-651M drivers. But these are not for attracting the mere mortals of the neighbourhood – when activated they call the spirits to the Temple for reincarnation.