The Taiwan Ling Yen Buddhist temple in Puli township, Nantou County recently underwent a massive sound system overhaul which featured Turbosound loudspeakers.
The system specification was put together by Teamwork Co. Ltd.
Based in Taichung, the company is headed by Harry Chen and regularly works on audio projects all over the island.
Teamwork initially faced an unusual challenge in that worshippers make repeated 90° turns throughout the long ceremonies.
So it was important that the quality of sound arriving from all sides of the temple be equal, and that the coverage be as seamless as possible.
The richly decorated main hall comfortably accommodates up to 1,200 worshippers for the three services held daily, each one lasting for between one and two hours.
In addition to the daily services, there are also several large annual ceremonies that can be up to a week in duration, meaning the Ling Yen temple sees almost continuous daily use.
Within this ornate space the entire sound system needed to be virtually invisible, as nothing could be allowed to distract the worshippers during meditation.
For this reason all the loudspeaker cabinets were built into the structure of the building.
The final choice of individual loudspeaker models was down to the monks themselves. At Chen’s suggestion of the Aspect TA-500 bi-amped three-way full range loudspeaker as the main component of the sound system design, and after listening to several options from the Turbosound range the monks confirmed their choice.
“The TA-500 is capable of delivering extreme clarity,” says Chen, “and we wanted the sound to be as intelligible as possible in what is a fairly reverberant space with lots of hard surfaces.”
“By locating the loudspeakers in the roof space and directing them downwards, we were able to achieve a very good transition to the secondary loudspeakers located in the walls of the main hall, and very good all-round coverage.”
Augmenting the main TA-500 loudspeakers – of which there are a total of eight units installed in the ceiling of the main hall – is a combination of mainly TCS-122 passive 2-way models, together with NuQ-12 passive 2-ways, both comprising 12” low frequency drivers and 1” HF compression drivers on Converging Elliptical Waveguides.
“Although we initially specified all TCS-122 cabinets for the main hall, we just could not find enough room in the higher level of the main hall to fit some of the loudspeakers,” explains Chen, “and so the obvious solution for the remainder was to substitute NuQ-12s – which are the same format, but with dimensions that better suited the available space.”
In addition a pair of TCS-122 passive two-way models are hidden in the front fascia of the building, positioned on the ground floor to left and right of main doorway, providing sound to the exterior of the temple.
An additional four NuQ-15s relay audio from the services, consisting of mostly live singing with occasional background music from CD, to outside the building. The entire system is driven from a central rack, powered by QSC amplifiers and controlled by XTA processors.
Turbosound’s Asia market manager Chris Gooddie stated, “Sonically, the system is amazing.”
“Sound comes at you from all sides but in a very unobtrusive way, and whichever way you are facing the sound character is the same. Teamwork has so impressed the monks that a further project in Taichung City is already scheduled, as well as at another Buddhist temple outside Taiwan.”
