UK - The Royal Masonic School for Girls is an independent day and boarding school in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. The Great Hall, with its ornate plaster ceiling, is the heart of the school's daily activities, hosting assemblies and special events throughout the academic year. The Hall recently added an L-Acoustics sound system to improve the venue's acoustic capabilities, particularly addressing the challenges posed by the hall's highly reverberant environment.
Following the successful recent installation of an L-Acoustics A Series system in the school's performance venue known as The Space, the Royal Masonic School again selected L-Acoustics certified provider Adlib for this installation. Tim Robinson, senior applications engineer at Adlib explains: “The aim was to provide a future-proof system which could provide accurate coverage throughout the space with adequate headroom and frequency response for media playback, as well as the possible future use as a performance space.”
The primary challenge with the Great Hall lay in overcoming the space's exceptional reverberation, which had historically rendered both amplified and natural speech nearly unintelligible.
The installation team faced the delicate task of creating flying points that would fulfil the acoustic requirements while preserving the integrity of the recently restored moulded plaster ceiling. Through careful planning and problem-solving, Adlib successfully mounted the main arrays while employing creative solutions for delay loudspeakers, utilising existing chandelier mounts to serve as non-structural tie-off points to set the azimuth angle, negating any requirement for additional penetrations through the ceiling.
L-Acoustics Soundvision played a crucial role in the system design process, enabling Adlib to experiment with various configurations. The resulting configuration maximises the ratio of direct to reverberant sound, ensuring consistent coverage throughout the hall.
The installation comprises left and right hangs of eight Kiva II variable curvature line source loudspeakers providing primary coverage, complemented by two SB15m compact subwoofers at the top of each hang, for extended low-frequency performance.
The system is further enhanced by two flown A10i Wide constant curvature line source enclosures and six 5XT point source loudspeakers spaced on the ground at the front of the stage, ensuring precise sound distribution throughout the Great Hall. At the heart of the system's power and precision is the LA7.16i multi-channel amplified controller with AES67 networking technology to deliver seamless operation and exceptional audio quality.
Robinson adds: “The significantly improved speech intelligibility has made the Great Hall a more comfortable and flexible environment, allowing the school to host events beyond school assemblies. It has opened new possibilities for the space's use, with the capability to support performance activities in the future through additional subwoofer integration if desired.”
Feedback from the school has been overwhelmingly positive, with staff and students noting marked improvements in sound clarity and even coverage throughout the hall.
