In fact GAB have just installed six in a 100V line distributed system, discretely mounted in the Grade A-listed Garnethill Synagogue (the oldest in Scotland), for concerts and school festivals. A further four grace the ornate meeting room at the Merchants Hall in George Square, again in the centre of Glasgow and the listed Meeting Chambers of one of the city’s oldest institutions. "The aesthetic styling and performance of these Contractor-series speakers makes them absolutely ideal for installation in heritage buildings," comments installation manager, John McHenry.
Housed in a polypropylene injection moulded enclosure, the Martin Audio C115 is a versatile surface-mount loudspeaker designed specifically for distributed sound systems. It has been carefully styled to present a discrete, high quality appearance which will be unobtrusive yet complementary in most commercial architectural environments. Supplied with a unique wall bracket, which permits off-axis adjustment of 40° horizontally and 35°vertically, wide bandwidth and high output capability are achieved via a 5" (120mm) 2-way drive unit utilising patented ICT (Inductively Coupled Transducer) technology.
GAB has a reputation for solving the problems of rooms with poor acoustics, which they approach from two angles, first treating the space with a variety of acoustics panels, absorbers and so on, and then choosing the appropriate speakers and positions for the task. A recent example is the concert hall in George Watsons College, Edinburgh, where acoustic panels tamed a reverb time of seven seconds, and six Martin W2s were flown from the high vaulted ceiling and augmented with two ground stacked W2 centre fills. The hall went from being virtually unusable to being a venue capable of delivering a very pleasing sound.
(Lee Baldock)
