Renkus-Heinz excites fans at Pomona College
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The college’s 30-year-old recreation centre no longer met the student body’s needs, so it embarked on a large-scale $55m project to revitalise and expand the centre’s offerings. Due to their high directivity and speech intelligibility, beam steering arrays from Renkus-Heinz were deployed in the main sports venue, Voelkel Gymnasium.
Joseph Brennan, director of IT operations, turned to Darryl Lima, president of DJL, to design the audio system for the gym and supporting facilities. “Basketball courts and other sports facilities are very challenging acoustic environments,” said Lima. “The active, steerable line arrays were used to focus the sound in just the seating areas to minimize the acoustic aberrations of a sports court.”
Four ICLive X Series loudspeaker arrays were flown above the gym while four TA151 compact loudspeakers were used as down-firing court-fills. Each array comprised one ICLLX module, two ICLX modules, and two ICLX-118S subwoofers. The ICLive X arrays are equipped with Renkus-Heinz’s Acoustic Source Multiplier (ASM) waveguide, allowing the high-frequency section to be coaxially mounted in front of the low-frequency section. The result is consistent and symmetrical delivery of high and low frequencies along the entire array length for superior audio reproduction.
The remodelled gym supports 21 NCAA teams and more than 1,800 intramural and 550 club athletes.
“The building was very challenging. The sports associations brought new minimum height restrictions into play, so everything ended up being flown,” said Lima. “But the system has received great reviews. It’s very focused and extremely powerful, a rare combination.”
