Quba Mosque, the first mosque ever built in Islamic history and one of only four mosques mentioned in the Quran, has implemented a Harman Professional audio system designed to deliver consistent, intelligible sound across its expanded prayer spaces.
As one of the four mosques mentioned in the Quran, alongside the Great Mosque in Makkah, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madina, and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Palestine, Quba Mosque stands among Islam’s most revered places of worship, making clarity, consistency, and restraint in sound reinforcement especially critical.
In partnership with HAV, the installation supports daily worship and large gatherings while preserving the site’s spiritual atmosphere and architectural character. Quba Mosque underwent several expansions over the centuries to accommodate growing numbers of worshippers and pilgrims. The most recent and largest is part of the King Salman Project, stemming from Saudi Vision 2030 efforts to enhance holy sites and pilgrim experiences, increasing its capacity to accommodate up to 66,000 worshippers across 50,000 square meters. Keeping with the serenity and the historical importance of the mosque, the challenge was to re-design the audio system, and provide a pure, highly intelligible sound that enhances the spiritual experience.
A key feature of the installation is the deployment of JBL SRX906 line array loudspeakers within the mosque’s four minarets, making Quba Mosque the only mosque in Saudi Arabia to have line arrays in its minarets. These compact line arrays provide focused, long-throw coverage, ensuring the call to prayer projects clearly over long distances while maintaining clarity and avoiding excessive reflections. Their controlled dispersion ensures that sound reaches surrounding areas evenly without overwhelming listeners.
Inside the mosque and across surrounding areas, JBL CBT 70J Series column loudspeakers provide consistent vertical coverage and balanced sound distribution. Their design helps direct audio evenly from front to back, minimizing variation in volume levels across large congregational spaces. Additional JBL Control Series and AWC Series loudspeakers extend coverage to auxiliary and outdoor areas, supporting a cohesive listening experience throughout the site.
The system is supported by BSS EC-8BV wall controllers and BLU-series DSP processors for signal routing, equalisation, delay alignment, and zoning. This enables precise tuning to the mosque's unique acoustics—compensating for reverberation, optimising phase coherence, and ensuring smooth transitions across zones, resulting in improved speech intelligibility (critical for understanding the Qur'an and khutbah) and overall coherence.