St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Singapore has replaced the analogue mixers in its two main worship halls with Allen & Heath Qu-32 compact digital mixers.
Located within the Central Business District, the cathedral was consecrated in 1862 and declared a national monument in 1973. As a major place of worship, St Andrew’s Cathedral hosts a number of different services, with a variety of musical requirements, and quick changeovers between events.
Kevin Quek, facilities manager, commented: “The cathedral has many services running back to back especially on Sundays from as early as 6.30am. With the previous analogue 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 five minutes. The numerous controls could be a headache, especially for new volunteers, and there were times when missing that one button caused some embarrassment.
“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!”
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 40 volunteers, their confidence grew. They were surprised at how easy the Qu-32 was to use, and how closely it resembled an analogue 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 motorised faders, high-efficiency ARM core processing, and an integrated multitrack USB recorder,” Goh concluded.
