The oldest Methodist church in Singapore, the Wesley Methodist Church can trace its roots back to 1885. Recently, the church conducted a blind listening session to help choose a new sound system for its large and unusually-shaped sanctuary, leading to the installation of an Outline Scala-90 loudspeaker system.

A consistently expanding ministry has driven the church to undertake regular development programmes over many years, which have included improving the sanctuary, adding a four-storey educational block with a concert hall and basement car park, a new baptismal hall with basement rooms and Wesley Plaza. Completed in 2012, another project created a further 36,000sq-ft of usable space, including a new plaza hall on top of the sanctuary extension, additional seating and the construction of another chapel in the basement.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, further works were undertaken to address the limitations of the L-shaped main space and its relatively low ceilings, while adding the facilities to create, capture and stream live content from the church. The church committee appointed local architects Ong & Ong and acoustic/production consultant Truephonic LLC to collaborate on the concept and design.

Extensive building works were undertaken which included reorientation of both stage and audience areas, and this fundamental change necessitated a complete review and subsequent replacement of the installed media infrastructure, including the sound system.

The choice of loudspeakers proved to be something of a test, given the unusual layout of the room and its physical constraints – room’s the relatively low ceiling and asymmetric layout dictated the use of a distributed audio system, using small clusters of super-compact line-source modules supplemented by subwoofers.

Three well-respected loudspeaker manufacturers were invited to demonstrate their products at a listening test in the hall, which was conducted in darkness so that each system could be evaluated purely on its audio performance and with its brand unknown to the selection team.

The listening material included two playback tracks and live performances by a guitarist and singer. All three systems were well-received and scored nearly identically, but ultimately Outline’s Scala-90 was selected on merit. The installed system includes three principal loudspeaker locations, each comprising three Outline Scala-90 constant curvature array modules. Although the enclosures are mounted horizontally, the Scala-90’s modest dimensions means that each array measures only 0.7m vertically and so sightlines are unaffected.

Two clusters of Outline Sub-118 subwoofers (in cardioid mode) are also flown from the ceiling to provide controlled low-frequency extension for the space, and the only other loudspeakers required are four Outline Vegas 8CX units for fill and delays. The system is powered by one Outline GTA Quattro Dante four-channel amplifier and one GTA Otto Dante eight-channel amplifier.