Introduction
Lewisham Islamic Centre is a Medium sized Mosque which grew from small and humble beginnings. It now has a capacity in excess of one thousand by combining many rooms and adjacent buildings. We have known Lewisham Islamic Centre for many, many years and after quite a few years of doing the sound for Eid in the Park we were asked to help fix the sound issues in the mosque itself. Not only did we fix the sound, we ended up updating the building’s networking, Wi-Fi and CCTV too!
Kit List
Amplifiers
- 2x Biamp 4120T 4 x 120W amplifiers
Microphones
- 1x Shure SM58S Handheld Mic on a Stand
- 1x Audio Technica Pro 70 Lapel Mic
Mixer
- Soundcraft Ui24R Digital Mixer
Networking (tbc)
- 8x Extreme Networks 1.75Gb/s 802.11AC Wi-Fi access points
- 3x Cisco, HP, 3com PoE Layer 3 switches (for access points and CCTV)
- 3x HP Layer 3 switches
- 1x Lenovo PC as a server
- 1x Lenovo PC as a media server
- Cat 6 cabling
The Existing Sound System
The existing sound system used a table-top gooseneck mic and a lapel radio mic for prayers which was causing quite a bit of noise, pops and feedback. The audio rack was quite full with an analogue mixer, various amps and a few offboard processors, which were quite good back in the day. None of it was really working well and now outdated.
Behind the Scenes
When we started work here’s what it looks like behind the equipment…
Going by the amount of dust on the cables the system has never been serviced and of much more concern, never been safety tested (PAT test). Sadly putting stickers on without actually testing for safety is commonplace and dangerous these days. In fact the power distribution strips at the back of the rack were both faulty when we removed them and parts could be heard rattling around inside. Dangerous and a PAT FAIL!
The New Sound System
The first step was to remove all of the old equipment back to the rack to give everything a good clean. We then started building.
We replaced the mixer and sound processors with their direct modern equivalent, the digital Soundcraft Ui24R which used the same processors as the old equipment but in one processing unit. We also replaced the QSC and Adastra amps with Biamp’s 4-channel selectable 100V / low impedance Class D amps.
A much cleaner and tidy rack! The amps feature a mute button for every channel so it is easy for people to turn areas / zones on or off or even turn the second amp off when not needed.
We tuned the reverb effect of the mixer with some recitation from some of the talented youth at the mosque and we are still training people on how to best use the system.
We are still at the mosque right now working on the A/V, IT and CCTV systems. Stay tuned for future updates to this post!
Conclusion
We can see the difference in installation quality visually and everyone agrees sonically too! All the noise, pops and feedback has been eliminated and sound is controllable from the Office PC.
We also updated the IT systems with VLANs, Wi-Fi access points with seamless roaming across the buildings and we’re streamlining the CCTV system at this present moment.
Get in touch to see what we can do for your House of Worship!