MONACOR: Referenceproject: Mosque Brühl

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The Islamic Community Centre in Brühl, Germany, has been active in the community for more than 40 years. Since 2000, the association has been based in Bergerstrasse in the east of Brühl, Germany. About 1,000 people visit the community centre every week. Various events and activities organised by the Islamic community encourages intercultural life with different religious beliefs in Brühl, Germany.

In 2015, planning permission was granted for the construction of Brühl's new mosque. It features a prayer room which is the centrepiece and can accommodate about 1,000 people. A PA system from MONACOR now ensures an excellent speech intelligibility throughout the mosque, despite challenging and difficult room acoustics.

Requirement

PA applications for places of worship such as synagogues, churches or mosques are often particularly challenging: speech intelligibility, sound distribution and user-friendly as well as intuitive operation are just some of the parameters which must be considered. The PA system in the new mosque was intended primarily to cover the prayer room with gallery, the foyer and other adjoining rooms. Top priority was given to highest speech intelligibility with a sound distribution as homogeneous as possible. The speakers were to be integrated unobtrusively into the existing architecture of the building.

Solution

For the PA application in the mosque, we have applied the class D power amplifier PA-412D for a 3-zone solution. The volume level can individually be adjusted for each of the 3 speaker zones via a maximum of 4 amplifier channels.

The prayer room, including the gallery, is equipped with a total of 12 high-quality PA column speakers in extruded aluminium cabinets: 2 speakers ETS-422TW/WS (20 W) have been applied at the front to the centre's right and left for the close-up range. Two speakers ETS-442TW/WS (40 W) have been installed at the sides. For the gallery as well as the area below, we have used 4 speakers ETS-422TW/WS. Both speaker models provide an excellent sound thanks to their 2-way design with additional tweeter. The aluminium wall bracket for pivoting and tilting ensures a precise sound alignment and allows for easy mounting, e.g. to columns or supporting pillars.

Both speaker models, ETS-442TW/WS (40 W) and ETS-422TW/WS (20 W), are of an elegant and unobtrusive design and thus can perfectly be integrated into the architecture of the mosque. The sound is directed towards the listeners and a high speech intelligibility is ensured throughout the entire prayer room.

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Versatile microphone technology for various applications

A versatile microphone setup is available for Qur'an readings, prayers and worship songs: the electret gooseneck microphones GML-5218 are used in the prayer pulpits. The scope of delivery includes 3 replaceable microphone cartridges with different polar patterns (cardioid, supercardioid and omnidirectional). This allows you to always find the perfect solution for different areas of application. The system is operated via an external phantom power supply or desktop microphone base ST-5030.

In addition, a 2-channel transmission path is available with UF-20R/5 and dynamic hand-held UHF PLL transmitter JSS-20/5 from JTS. The integrated REMOSET® function allows you to operate the microphone setup without any prior knowledge of wireless transmission. The wireless microphone JSS-20/5 is set to the transmission frequency selected at the receiver. For improving the operating range and for a low susceptibility to interference, 2 passive UHF wideband omnidirectional antennas ANT-49 are connected to the receiver UF-20R/5. Thus, a good reception without interference can be ensured at all times.

The microphone setup also includes a 2-channel audio transmission system TXS-727HSE/B with 2 pocket transmitters and headband microphone with back electret cartridge. The headset HSE-110 is specifically designed for voice applications which require unrestricted movement. The subtle design allows for an unobtrusive attachment to the head.

A dynamic microphone DM-730S from IMG STAGELINE (supercardioid polar pattern) is used as an alternative or as an addition. All participants, both speaker and visitors, benefit from a clear and natural sound in the entire mosque thanks to a range of features aimed specifically at the reproduction of speech.

Florian Welzbacher, project planning expert at MONACOR, sums up the result as follows: