St. Andrew’s Cathedral, which is the Cathedral Church of the Anglican Diocese of Singapore, was consecrated in 1862 and gazetted as a national monument in 1973. It recently upgraded its audio systems with the addition of Allen & Heath Qu-32 digital mixers.
In the Cathedral, the Qu-32 digital mixers are installed in the traditional worship hall at the main building and the contemporary worship space at the extension building. The Extension building’s sound system is close to 10 years old and the Spirit 8 mixer being used was beginning to fail. Similarly, the mixer at the main building which is a Presonus 24 channel unit was also showing some signs of failing. This prompted the church to search for replacements.
Like many other churches, St. Andrew’s Cathedral required the mixing solution for its different services as well as for various musicians and choirs. Kevin Quek, facilities manager at the Cathedral, explained: “The Cathedral has many services running back to back especially on Sundays from as early as 6.30am to 9.30pm. With the previous analogue mixer, there were ‘resettings’ that needed to be done especially during service changeovers. This caused some anxiety amongst our volunteers manning the mixer as the time in-between services can be as close as 3-5 minutes.â€
The Allen & Heath Qu-32 digital mixer offers 32 inputs and 24 mix outputs to help meet the requirements of the church. The mixer can be controlled through its 7-in full colour touch screen and a logical interface. Quek said: “With the QU 32, we preset the scenes to the service requirements. Now all that they need to do is to recall their scenes and almost instantaneously, everything falls into place, ready to go.â€
Arrangements for a familiarization course for the staff and volunteers at St. Andrew’s Cathedral were made and conducted by Simon Wong from Electronics & Engineering. Further sessions were also arranged for different services and more training based on their service needs and they were provided with hands on sessions, which were made available for a two weeks before the mixers were finally installed.
Gary Goh, deputy managing director of Electronics & Engineering, said: “The House of Worship environment is unique in the sense that the people responsible for the mixing of the sound are generally volunteers. A lot of time is saved with a mixer like the Qu-32, which works intuitively and helps make the operations much easier. It is always very satisfying when we see that the solutions provided work to our clients’ benefit.â€