Singapore’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral recently installed two Allen & Heath Qu-32 compact digital mixers at front of house in its two main worship halls, replacing the existing analog mixers.
Located within the Central Business District, the Cathedral was consecrated in 1862 and declared a national monument in 1973.
St Andrew’s Cathedral faces the challenge of hosting a number of different services, with a variety of musical requirements, and quick changeovers between events.
The installation of 32in/24out Qu-32 digital mixers in the traditional worship hall at the Main Building and the contemporary worship space at the Extension building, has provided a solution.
“The Cathedral has many services running back to back especially on Sundays from as early as 6.30am. With the previous analog mixer, a ‘reset’ was needed during service changeovers. This caused some anxiety amongst our volunteers manning the mixer, as the time between services can be as close as 5 minutes. The numerous controls could be a headache, especially for new volunteers, and there were times when missing that one button caused some embarrassment,” commented Kevin Quek, facilities manager at the Cathedral.
“With the QU-32, we preset the scenes to the service requirements. Now, all that the volunteers need to do is to recall their scenes, and almost instantaneously everything falls into place ready to go. One volunteer commented that now they have “so much time” on their hands whilst waiting for the service to commence!” continued Quek.
Initially it was feared that volunteers would not be able to cope with the digital mixer but following a training session with Simon Wong from E&E, attended by nearly forty volunteers, their confidence grew. They were surprised at how easy the Qu-32 was to use, and how closely it resembled an analog mixer.
“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,” commented Gary Goh, deputy managing director of Electronics & Engineering Pte.
“The Allen & Heath Qu-32 is designed with a logical layout, so you can get to what you need, fast. Featuring touchscreen control, 32 AnalogiQ preamps, instant recall, 33 motorized faders, high-efficiency ARM core processing, and an integrated multitrack USB recorder, the Qu-32 presents an impressive feature set at a competitive price,” Goh concludes.