Community flies high in Adelaide adventure
- Details
With operations in Singapore and Australia, Mega Adventure was founded by explorer and adventurer Alex Blyth, with the aim of becoming a global leader in bringing adventure experiences to urban communities. The Mega Adventure Aerial Park in Adelaide is the first of its kind in the world and was designed and built by Mega Adventure’s sister company, Touch Cloud Global.
Following the successful provision of sound systems for its other adventure parks, Mega Adventure again commissioned the services of John Horder of Horder Communication Solutions to provide a high quality, cost-effective sound solution for the aerial adventure park.
Requiring a system to cover the 25m high open structure with maximum control of overspill, Horder approached Hills Audio Visual to assist with a design using Community R Series loudspeakers. The brief specified that the system must provide very high quality music and speech uniformly throughout all levels of the structure, with no spill to the north and south where a residential holiday park and a leisure resort are situated, and limited spill towards the golf course to the east. Only the western border had no restrictions as this faced sand hills and the ocean.
Blake Kirby of Hills Audio Visual explained the system design, “We decided to use Community R SeriesR.35-3896 loudspeakers for a number of reasons. They offered superb frequency response and SPL specifications, with a well-controlled dispersion pattern. Additionally their all-weather capability was suited to the marine environment and their physical footprint suited flying from the structure - they looked great and the colour was perfect. Their excellent value for money and being able to achieve perfect coverage from a small number of loudspeakers combined to meet the budget.”
Mr Kirby continued, “We chose to fly two loudspeakers pointing down and to the west where dispersion was not an issue and one speaker down and to the east to fill the pattern, but still reduce spill to the east. Each was driven by separate 200W Class D amplifiers as a single zone. The result in controlled coverage and sound quality was simply awesome.
“The control of the spill exceeded expectations and the sound throughout the structure is uniform, meeting the specified high quality. Very limited EQ was required, with just a small lift at 300Hz and 10K for subjective preference. SPL from the top level is so uniform as to be indiscernible by participants,” concludes Mr Kirby.
Mega Adventure Adelaide GM, Stephen Grundy, commented, “Now my structure has all the senses covered. It really makes it feel inclusive, especially when there are not a lot of people on the structure.” Mr Grundy was also very pleased with the progression from the existing speakers on the harnessing deck while walking towards the structure. “It’s seamless,” he reported.
(Jim Evans)
