Hawthorn Theatrical was commissioned to supply a sophisticated AV system to Elveden Forest's new multi-purpose Sports Café, designed to be extremely flexible, interactive and, above all, simple to operate. The Sports Café contains a variety of sports facilities including table tennis, snooker and a swimming pool. It also hosts twice-weekly cabaret shows, a roller disco and street theatre-style entertainment. Hawthorn Theatrical's project manager Terry Forryan appointed audio consultant Richard Waghorn to design a multi-functional audio system, which would integrate seamlessly into the overall AMX control system.
Waghorn's design centered on Bi-Amp's innovative digital control platform - Audia. He approached Bi-Amp's exclusive UK distributor, beyerdynamic and collaborated with beyerdynamic's Chris Hinds and Jon Stanley. Together they configured the system to Waghorn's exacting specifications. Waghorn explained: "Audia had been recommended as being an ideal tool for this application and I was impressed with its specification and operating system. Audia fitted the bill in that we needed a systems controller with eight inputs and eight outputs that could be controlled using LCD panels via an AMX system. It had the edge over other products on the market as it is very easy to program, allowing a multitude of pre-set audio configurations to be recalled simply via a touch screen. In addition, it offers plenty of DSP processing capacity and equalization, both of which were particularly useful on this project."
Waghorn achieved an even direct freefield sound across all the areas in the Sports Café. This allowed the audio levels to be kept low using a high speaker density with amplification provided by MC2. The system comprised over 160 speaker cabinets from Martin Audio: a combination of CS16s and C115s were deployed in the bar area whilst W3Ps, EM 56s and S118s were used for the cabaret/roller disco arena.
The system was configured on a single PC screen and downloaded into Audia, which packs numerous audio components (EQ, dynamics, matrixing, delay, speaker protection limiting, crossovers, level control) into a single 2U unit. Forryan commented: "We're delighted that Audia has worked so well. It offers the potential to greatly simplify the design and specification process. Once installed it can be software configured to meet the requirements of virtually any application, and is easily operated by technical and non-technical users alike."
(Lee Baldock)
