latest news headlines
Vieta's Wireless So Cubes in the Painted Hall
The remarkable Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, south London, was designed and built at the start of the 18th century by Sir Christopher Wren. During its rich history, the body of Admiral Nelson has lain in state in the Hall, it has been used as an art gallery, and described as "the finest dining hall in Europe". With its elaborately decorated domed ceiling, and huge recessed windows, it has also been described by a leading sound engineer as "an acoustic nightmare".
The Painted Hall was chosen by event organisers Stockdale Martin as the venue for the British Chamber of Commerce's Annual Awards gala dinner, attended by 500 leading businessmen. The black-tie event is a sit-down dinner, with awards being announced and presented from a podium set up towards one end of the Hall.
Audio-visual contractor for the event was Norwich-based Key AV, which enlisted the technical support of Vieta's UK distributor Resolution Distribution to provide the largest rental system of Vieta's wireless So Cubes assembled to date outside Spain.
In total, the Awards evening made use of 47 Cubes, three of which were for monitoring applications. Forty-four cubes were positioned on tables around the Painted Hall, all working on a single transmission frequency from the So-1101 transmitter and Vieta VDC1 processor at Key AV's front-of-house position.
"The nature of the Painted Hall's architecture creates a very very long reverb time, around six seconds," pointed out system design consultant Chrys Lindop. "It's a really difficult acoustic environment, a nightmare for an engineer."
The appearance of Vieta's unique wireless So Cubes, so unobtrusive on a laid-up dinner table, puzzled many of the venue staff and guests . . . until the speeches began. When guests are seated, just a few feet from the nearest So Cube, speech intelligibility is excellent, and all the negative effects of reverberation are eliminated. "The sound comes from the table, not from a distant podium or PA speaker," says Trevor Evans of Key AV. "As the sound is mono and omni-directional, it is evenly distributed through 360 degrees so you don't get the sensation that all the output is coming from the Cube.
"The alternative for us would have been to fly speakers from a truss, but that would spoil the look of this amazing room. Using the Vieta So Cubes meant we could completely avoid cabling and speaker stands, and the Cubes looked very neat on the tables. It's a very elegant solution."
A system which deployed nearly 50 So Cubes to provide speech reinforcement for 500 people was easily managed and set up by just one person. Andy Simmons of KV2 Audio single-handedly saw to all assembly, charging and setting-out of the equipment. The system did link into the sub-bass units of the Painted Hall's house system, but "only to supplement the low frequencies to around 80Hz for the music element of the evening's programme – it wasn't necessary for speech reinforcement."
4th January 2007
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
