The temple, its £11 milllion cost entirely funded by the local Sikh community, has been designed to look similar to the traditional Gurdwaras found in Punjab, India. Serving as a house of worship and a community centre, the temple will also host open days, tours, and school visits to teach people about the Sikh religion.
Audio Installation Services (AIS) from Bedford are becoming known as the go-to guys for AV installations in houses of worship. Having completed notable projects for other Sikh and Hindu temples as well as a sizeable mosque in Bedford, Luke Magliaro at AIS is a regular user of Electro-Voice in worship environments.
"In congregational chambers, speech clarity is all-important, but the loudspeakers do need to be able to pack a punch when the hall is full," says Magliaro, who has chosen EV ZX1 high-performance compact cabinets for the three 'Diwans' or prayer halls. AIS has used 10x ZX1s in white for the main 800-capacity Diwan, 7x ZX1s for the smaller rooms. "They are the right size, colour and voicing, and they work very well." Each Diwan has a recital platform for the religious readings, as well as a smaller platform for musicians which is equipped with Electro-Voice PL84S condenser microphones.
Magliaro had the advantage of being brought into the project at a relatively early stage, so he was able to specify a hard-wired network infrastructure to carry AV signal around the multi-storey building. "The facilities are super-flexible," he says. "When the main Diwan is full, the congregation can overflow into the smaller Diwans, where they can follow the ceremonies on the video projection screens with full audio.
"Audio feeds from all rooms can be sent to all other rooms, including the 'Langer Hall' or community kitchen, the spacious entrance atrium, and the large multi-purpose function space on the sub-ground level." The specification includes remote volume controls on the wall of each hall, so that ambient levels can be managed even when the central control room is unmanned.
AIS has used Electro-Voice's CP1800 amplifiers throughout, main racks in the control room and line amplifiers in all the other key areas of the temple. All video switching is handled in the main control room, from the screens in each Diwan providing translation from the original language of the scriptures, to the digital signage down in the entrance atrium.
"With 12 inputs on the stage, the Gurdwara technical team have the equipment to put together some nice recordings," says Luke Magliaro. "Many of my clients in this sector are extremely clued up about new media opportunities: by selling recordings of ceremonies, audio CD and/or video DVD, they can raise revenues which, in theory, could pay for their AV system within a year. Also with the new satellite TV channel for the Sikh community, there are broadcast possibilities - we have included audio and video feeds for TV crews in our system design, and these have already been used at the opening ceremony for the Gurdwara Sahib."
(Jim Evans)
