Built in 1972 to mark the Guild Celebrations of that year, the Guild Hall and Charter Theatre is one of Britain's most successful multi-purpose, entertainment, exhibition and conference centres, and is now renowned internationally for its presentation of entertainment and major indoor sporting events. The auditorium, which has an adaptable stage area, can accommodate more than 2000 people for a concert or theatre production. It is also used for high-profile sporting competitions, notably snooker, which is staged in-the-round.
The Guild Hall has been a regular client of Adlib Audio for many years, using the Liverpool-based PA specialists for concert hires. Adlib still had to tender for the installation, proposing a Nexo GEO S tangent array system that would address the Hall's principal requirement of sound reinforcement for conferences, meetings, theatre shows, sports and social events.
Led by sales manager Roger Kirby, the Adlib design team was constrained by order of the management, which wanted to allow touring bands to bring in their own production equipment. Primary flying positions for loudspeakers were thus reserved for this purpose. Adlib's installation manager Mark Burnley consulted closely with Jeremy Hunter and Ed Draycott from Nexo distributor Fuzion, using the GEOSoft planning and prediction software to evaluate different locations for the loudspeaker cabinets.
"We knew what the GEO S boxes were capable of," says Roger Kirby, "but the compactness of the cabinets was equally persuasive. We had about a 2sq.m footprint either side of the room in which to work. Additionally, there is a large canopy over the stage which is part of the original Guild Hall design, so we had to take its structure into consideration, which covers areas above and beyond the stage footprint." To compound the difficulty, Adlib was given just over two weeks in which to complete the entire installation.
Either side of the 22m stage, two arrays of GEO S hang barely a metre apart due to space constraints. One hang, containing six GEO S805s and one S830, addresses the main floor space and the central bank of seats at the back of the Hall. Next to it, the second hang, with four GEO S805s and a single S830, covers the side of the hall. A centre fill of two cabinets takes care of the immediate front rows of seats. Three Nexo CD12 sub bass units are flown each side, hanging from the same bumper bar behind the main array of seven GEO S. Additionally, Adlib has used its proprietary AA1214 640W 12"+1 1/4" cabinets to cover seats directly adjacent to the stage.
"The objective was a permanent system that could be adapted from a pros-arch application to an in-the-round application without a complete cabinet re-rig," says Kirby. "This can now be easily achieved using Nexo's NX242 TDcontrollers. Careful calculation of GEO S cabinet angles means the system can, by disabling a couple of amplifier channels, be silenced on the Hall floor, perfect for applications in the round such as a snooker tournament."
Fuzion has supplied Camco high-performance amplifiers to power the system: two Vortex 6 units are used for the CD12 subs, and four of the new Tecton Series 32.4 drive the GEO S cabinets. All loudspeaker processing is managed through the three NX242 TDcontrollers.
Kelsey Acoustics supplied a 48-way multicore system, custom mains distribution for the amplifier racks, a new control and effects rack and EQ rack, and the multi-pin panel loom sets which allowed the mix control to be easily disassembled and relocated. Kelse
