The museum install features an assortment of Amadeus speaker and sub-woofer models to offer the public a Hi-Fi audio experience throughout the vast museum. Merging Technologies, Solid State Logic and Flux also added key ingredients to the new museum install to control the Amadeus speakers.
Amadeus' director of R&D, Michel Deluc, and designer Bernard BYK, created completely new speaker and subwoofer configurations for the massive, over 180-speaker, sound system install at the National Museum of Natural History.
The new speaker design has extended the Amadeus PMX Series with a super-compact 4-inch coaxial driver model, the PMX 4. Bernard BYK and Michel Deluc also designed two new compact sub-woofers specifically for the install, the ML 8, and the ML 12 SLIM, with 8" and 12" drivers respectively. The ML 8 is the smallest of the Amadeus ML Series of subwoofers; likewise the PMX 4 is the smallest of its series. Custom-made product manufacturing, solving acoustical or technical issues, and addressing market demands, are all strong traditions at Amadeus, and the large and complex Museum of Natural History install is an excellent example.
Bernard BYK, co-founder and CEO of Amadeus comments: "I have been trained as an architect, and this training definitely influences both the products we develop and the projects we work on. I think that for an architect, the starting point is to decrypt the space and to think of the way to put one's work in a cultural, social and environmental context. That's the way we design our sound systems. We think about their integration in different places, and we supervise this integration. Each space has its own acoustical characteristics and above all its own architectural properties. Our work is to take these phenomena into account to increase the transparency of our sound systems."
The previously released PMX 5, 5-inch driver model, was also used in the museum install with special finishes of high-gloss 'Oyster White' for the cabinet and a 'Pearl Gold' finish for the AirTex fabric for the speaker protection grill to specifically match the color of the main ceilings of the Museum. Additionally, a modified ML 12 subwoofer (named the ML 12 SLIM), was re-designed as a slimmer version to be built-in some of the museum's high-walled cabinets that were not deep enough to hold the standard ML model.
Several of the new ML sub-woofers are installed in prominent locations that the public can see and feature an attractive natural Beech wood exterior, matching the paired PMX 4 speakers in Beech wood. All the updated or newly created products, including the PMX 4 and ML 8 subwoofer, are now available for other installs as standard parts of the PMX and ML series Amadeus product lines.
On the amplification side, Amadeus developed and launched two prototypes, the Multiamp and A Series (both to be released in 2015) to match the needs of the museum install. These two new Amadeus Amplifier Series extend, complete, and perfect the 'hi-fi' dimension and sound of the Amadeus speaker products. They integrate carefully listened to and selected components from among the most efficient and transparent of the audiophile market.
"The National Museum of Natural History install is a high-point of the many years in speaker and amplifier design by Amadeus. It is a perfect example of the outcome from the Amadeus brand philosophy that is built on the long-standing, close and productive relationships we have maintained with talented designers and scenographers, both in France and around the world, for over 35 years," stated Gaetan BYK, marketing manager at Amadeus.
(Jim Evans)
