The premier venue in the complex is the main outdoor arena, where the 120m diameter circular show grounds are flanked on one side by a covered grandstand with seating for 1,500 spectators. To project uniform, high-fidelity sound into the seating area, AV-TECH installed eight clusters of two M1D line array loudspeakers each along the front wall. The VIP area is served by a pair of the compact UPM-1P loudspeakers, while the vast expanse of the arena grounds - about 120m in diameter - is covered by three ground-stacked arrays of three M2D line array loudspeakers each.
"The old 100 volt distributed system had very harsh sound quality and poor intelligibility," says Hadi Arzouni, general manager of AV-TECH, the Doha, Qatar-based designer and installer of the new systems. "When we first turned on the Meyer Sound system, the client immediately noticed that the sound was extremely intelligible and powerful, and that it was now suitable for quality music playback."
The audio system also comprises a Midas Venice 160 mixing console, four Sennheiser EW-145 wireless microphones, and a playback rack with Tascam cassette and CD players and a 360 Systems digital instant replay system. System drive and processing is provided by a Meyer Sound Galileo loudspeaker management system.
The balance of the loudspeaker complement is installed in the indoor arena, where 32 UPJ-1P VariO compact loudspeakers are suspended from the roof in yoked pairs over the grandstand seating areas. Mixing, playback, and system drive capabilities here are essentially the same as those available for the outdoor arena system.
(Jim Evans)
