www.psneurope.com
August 2013 l 51
installationreport
The installation had to follow strict English Heritage guidelines
Steering around the beams UNITED KINGDOM
An audio upgrade at York’s historic guildhall requires an ultra-discreet installation from Polar Audio and Saville Audio Visual, writes Dave Robinson
CONSTRUCTION OF The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall in historic York began in 1357 and today, over 650 years later, it is still in use as a fully- functioning venue and meeting place. As one of the finest surviving medieval guildhalls in the world, the facility is Grade 1 listed and is the largest timber- framed building in the UK still being used for its original purpose. When it came to the upgrade of the hall’s speech and background music system, English Heritage was adamant that the fabric and appearance of one of England’s finest medieval buildings should remain as undisturbed as possible. The installation was to cover
two separate rooms, having the capacity to operate independently in each, or across the venue as a whole. Tackling the ‘no-compromise’ aesthetic brief was the task of Polar Audio in conjunction with installer Saville Audio Visual.
Three systems were installed
across the two rooms for the greatest flexibility. The large room was equipped with a speech and background music system as well as a conferencing system, while the small room had its own speech- only system – both systems can be linked to cover the entire facility if required.
Central to the discreet sonic solution was the deployment of two “colour-matched” Renkus- Heinz Iconyx IC16 speakers in the main room. (This was the subject of much discussion: black enclosures were the final choice as they were closest to the dark hue of the wood.) These speakers are designed to be heard but not seen, mounting flush on walls and pillars. In this case they replaced 16 existing speakers. Multiple sonic beams can be individually shaped and aimed from a single Iconyx array with precision and here they met the challenge in respect of improving both the visual aesthetic and, of course, the sound quality. At the heart of the systems
Spot the Iconyx IC16...
are MC2 T4-250 amplifiers and Biamp Nexia CM DSP processor; in addition to the Iconyx IC16s, are Renkus-Heinz CFX 81 and CFX 61 speakers, situated in the smaller room. Two Biamp Red 1 controllers handle independent source
Renkus-Heinz CFX series speakers are used in the smaller room
selection and volume control, while all the wireless radio microphones for speech and conferencing are beyerdynamic products. Having operated under the acute gaze of English Heritage in a Grade 1 listed building, Polar Audio business development manager Mark Bromfield reflected: “The Heritage people were understandably quite stringent in their demand that the
installation should sit as invisibly as possible in its surroundings and we were very conscious of this. The sophistication of the Iconyx technology gave us a huge advantage. We felt confident that we had succeeded when the first post-install visitors didn’t actually notice the speakers and yet were knocked out by the quality of the sound!”n
www.polaraudio.co.uk www.saville-av.com
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