Brent Thornhill of Silsbee, Texas-based Southwest Building Systems (SBS) reports, "Their old sound system was a set of horn loudspeakers that had been in place for nearly 50 years. Coverage was pretty much non-existent anywhere off-axis of the horns, which meant most of the seats, suffered from poor intelligibility. It was pretty frustrating for them."
The original goal was to replace the horns with a distributed system of in-ceiling loudspeakers. But the age of the building resulted in an unforeseen snag. "When we had a look at the ceiling we realised it was made of asbestos tiles", says Thornhill. "Cutting or drilling into those tiles would have caused far more problems."
Instead, SBS recommended dual stacks of Entasys full-range columns, one on either side of the stage. "The room is fairly wide, so the 180-degree coverage angle of the Entasys was ideal", says Thornhill, who worked together with SBS's Justin Player to assemble the new system. "With just four Entasys columns, we achieved better, more uniform coverage than we could have with a whole ceiling full of conventional loudspeakers". Four of Community's VLF212 subwoofers provide low frequency reinforcement.
Thornhill says the new system has made a world of difference. "For the past few years, their one-act play class hadn't even been using the auditorium anymore - they'd been using the gymnasium instead. Now that they've got the Entasys system, they've been using the auditorium again, and the school's got their gym back. Everyone wins."
(Jim Evans)
