Adlib's sales and installations team, headed by John Hughes and Roger Kirby, was approached by ISG Regions, who were managing the building development works for Manchester City Council, about a fixed solution for the Velodrome track.
Once the plans for the system design were approved, the installation schedule was gruelling. It involved Adlib's crews working at height, in confined spaces and using a variety of mobile high level access platforms during five weeks of overnight shifts.
Adlib believed that a line array would deliver optimum unified audio coverage that was required. Having used a variety of CODA's loudspeaker ranges with great success in rental productions, they understood that the Airline LA8 loudspeakers would provide a perfect solution in this demanding environment.
CODA's Focus software was used to acoustically model the venue, and the resulting design was based on four 'North-South-East-West' LA8 clusters each of two speakers, flown above the centre of the arena, augmented with three hangs firing at the main stands towards each side of the Velodrome.
In total there are four audio zones across the 46 x Airline LA8 speakers in 16 hangs and the six hangs of two Airline LA4s.
Signal processing and signal distribution is managed by Soundweb London BLU-100 devices. A separate voice evacuation system linked to the fire alarm is used for emergency announcements which interface with the main CODA system signal when activated.
John Hughes concludes, "It's really rewarding to work on projects of this scale with such demanding operational requirements. We are very proud that ADLIB installations can deliver these high levels of service, excellence and technical support as well as offering the imagination and acoustic engineering skills to design a flexible and appropriate system with limited budgetary constraints."
(Jim Evans)
