Case Study – Greenwich Islamic Centre

We chose the Harman Pro Ecosystem as a leading brand with BSS processing, Crown Amplification and JBL speakers used throughout. Brand awareness was important as we felt many people have heard of JBL and would feel proud to have thoroughbred and internationally recognised equipment. The Harman Pro ecosystem allows extensive flexibility and integration with other components.

The new building’s ground floor hall has 4 JBL CBT 100-LA speakers at the front with 2 rows of 4 JBL Control 18CT ceiling speakers providing delayed fill sound. This gives the effect of sound coming from the front of the hall focusing attention to the front and to the Imam.

The basement hall has the same configuration as the ground floor hall but uses 4 JBL CBT 50-LA speakers at the front.

Other areas use a mix of JBL Control 26CT ceiling speakers and JBL Control One Pro wall mounted speakers for other halls and rooms.

Four TOA TC-631 horns were used for the Minaret using an existing old Behringer amplifier and is the only active analogue part of the system.

The main system is fully digital to eliminate any sources of noise, from the Yamaha TIO 1608D Dante stage boxes at the front of each of the main halls to the Yamaha TF1 mixer in the control room which is routed to the BSS Soundweb London Blu-806, Blu-160 & Blu-326 processors. These in turn process and route audio to the amplifiers via Dante. The front JBL CBT-100 and CBT-50 column speakers in the two new halls are driven by two JBL / Crown DSi 20SA4D 4 channel Dante amps with DSP and monitoring and the ceiling speakers driven by Cloud CV8125 Dante 8 channel amps. Void Bias Q1 Dante amps were used to drive foyers and wall mounted speakers in the old building and other areas. The Dante network was configured as a redundant fault tolerant network with the secondary network ports configured as a backup. We also installed an analogue pathway as a third backup to allow an easy to configure system that the staff could use in an emergency.

The system is controlled using two Apple iPads to allow wireless control and routing via custom presets from Audio Architect which runs on two virtual Windows 10 machines on the servers. This also provided a very flexible, convenient and cost effective system vs having fixed wall panels which are limited in functionality and flexibility.

The network infrastructure needed a complete overhaul as the system relies on a reliable and secure network for both Dante digital audio and Wi-Fi control. The Mosque also relies on Wi-Fi for collecting donations using their wireless card machines.

On many occasions the previous network had failed resulting in the card machines not working which would cost the Mosque dearly with missed revenue so a robust network infrastructure was required.

A 42U rack was installed in the control room to house all the equipment. The control room was fitted with a dedicated power feed for the rack and air conditioning added for thermal management.

Two Soundweb London processors were used in a fault tolerant way to distribute the load between them in case of equipment failure or maintenance. The processors provide ample power to allow gain, parametric EQ, delay, limiting on all channels and extensive monitoring.

Two Internet connections were needed to ensure continuous internet availability. Two HP DL380 servers running Proxmox virtualisation software were installed as a cluster to host two pfSense firewall virtual machines configured as master / failover cluster and two Windows 10 workstation virtual machines for control and configuration. The pfSense firewalls control the two Internet connections to allow channel bonding and failover. They also provide the VLAN networks for isolation and protection of the Dante Primary and Secondary audio, control, LAN and Wi-Fi networks. Ubiquiti access points are used in a mesh to provide Wi-Fi throughout the building for both system control and mosque payment networks.

Two HP 5500EI Layer 3 switches configured as a stack for high availability were installed with two 10Gbit fibre connections to the servers supporting the VLANs and providing POE+ for the Wi-Fi access points. Each switch has enough capacity to support the entire network should one switch fail or be taken out for maintenance. Dante is configured as Primary / Secondary redundant failover. The equipment is connected across both switches in an interleaved configuration for fault tolerance. The switches have a lifetime warranty and are very reliable.

Two Riello SDU 4000 UPSs were installed and loaded to 40% with the equipment distributed equally between them. This ensures seamless power if a UPS is taken out of production for maintenance and is reconfigurable to power the entire rack if necessary. Approximately 1 hour of power is available at peak continuous usage in the event of a power failure to ensure the Mosque’s prayer services are uninterrupted.

Two Sennheiser MZH 3042 Gooseneck mics with ME35 capsules were installed into the Podium using two MZS31 shock mounts. This allows the Imam to talk naturally and able to move his head freely to address the congregation. For prayers and announcements a Shure SM58S mic on a KMS round base mic stand was installed and an Audio Technica Pro70 wired lapel mic is used to catch speech in all the different positions the Imam has while leading the prayers.

The system was equalised wirelessly with the iPads controlling Audio Architect. Parametric EQ on each channel running on the Soundweb Processors helped reduce resonant frequencies to maximise Gain Before Feedback.