Tedworth House is one of four recovery centres run by the Help for Heroes charity, providing both residential and day care to servicemen who have had life-changing injuries or illnesses, acting as a 'launch pad' back to life.
"For an event like this we would normally be asked for a straightforward lectern microphone and small PA system," says CPS Group hire manager Mike Naish. "As servicemen and long-term supporters of the charity, the princes were invited to officially open the new facility and, of course, it created a lot of media interest. So as well as having to provide high quality audio for around 700 guests, we had to provide isolated, balanced feeds for 30 broadcast media outlets."
AYamaha CL5 and two Rio3224-D i/o units were specified to fulfil the brief.
"The CL5 was ideal for this kind of application, definitely the best-suited console to that number of balanced outputs and a live PA," adds the company's Olly Lissenburg. "We have done other projects for Help for Heroes and they trust us to deliver solutions which are high quality and give everybody the confidence that they are totally reliable."
CPS also used a Yamaha digital console to relay the words of another high profile public figure - MP and former Home Secretary Jack Straw - and other delegates at the 2013 Information and Records Management Society conference. Held in the 1300-capacity Oxford Suite at Brighton's Hilton Metropole, CPS used an LS9-32 console to mix the event's audio, via a Nexo PS10/LS500 PA system using Yamaha power amplifiers.
"It was a high profile conference attended by many organisations to whom information management and data storage are important, such as the National Archives and the police," says CPS's Richard Colegate. "The conference required lectern and radio microphones, plus audio playback. We chose the LS9 for its reliability, small footprint and because they wanted an audio recording for transcribing the event's minutes. Being able to do this on a USB stick in the LS9, without having to bring in anything else for recording, was really useful.
"The Nexo PS10s were a great loudspeaker for the event - compact enough to be discreet in a conference environment, yet powerful enough to ensure good intelligible speech coverage throughout a large room," he continues. "With the addition of the LS500 subs, they sounded phenomenal for the music stabs during the awards ceremony in the evening and the VT during the conference itself."
(Jim Evans)
