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Aerial view of the Funktion-One MST Horns in the Bolshoy Ice Dome.
SHOWCASE
SOUND SYSTEMS
horns deliver excellent lower frequency dispersion control without recourse to impact compromising corrective processing techniques. In acoustically challenging environments, sound can therefore be focused where it’s needed, without unnecessarily exciting the reverberant space. This control, combined with ultra-low distortion and exceptional pattern control, results in clear message transmission and intimate, intelligible and involving sound which feels perceptibility close to the listener. Their weight – only 65kg – makes them very user-friendly.
Andrews explains: “Sound as humans understand it, is ten octaves wide. It’s a large bandwidth with the dimension of the frequencies involved being orders of magnitude different in size. You can easily achieve high frequency directivity – a horn of only three or four inches will control frequencies above 5kHz, the waves are tiny, in the region of an inch. Whereas bass waves can be 30 or 40 feet long – longer, even. So my objective with the large MST waveguides was to control all the speech frequencies, including the chesty ones.
“If a waveguide is not big enough to control these frequencies then they
will diffract off its edges to the point where some of them will be propagating behind the waveguide refl ecting back from the roof, arriving some milliseconds after the original – that is a real destroyer of intelligibility because you’re no longer on a nice original singular arrival.
“More sound going directly to the audience area means less excitement of the reverberant fi eld. So, the point of the big waveguide is to have maximum directivity which leads directly to improved intelligibility. It’s just the application of common sense and physics.”
Outdoor and indoor sound
Fourteen MST Horns have been deployed across the 2km downhill Bobsleigh site – in four separate positions. They are grouped in pairs or in fours, and combine individual attributes of 40 degrees horizontal and 20 degrees vertical dispersion to form horizontal coverage parameters of 80 or 160 degrees. The MSTs span a frequency range from 150Hz up to 18kHz.
Where extra reinforcement is needed, the MSTs have been supplemented
Bolshoy Ice Dome is the main ice arena for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympcs. Photo credit: Getty.
by 163 Funktion-One F55 compact speakers, 14 AX88 2-way passive mid- high loudspeakers, 18 AX8 speakers and six F118 single 18-inch bass enclosures.
Less than 50km from the Bobsleigh Track, in a south-westerly direction towards the Black Sea, a collection of venues reside in neat formation. The Coastal Cluster caters for winter sports less reliant on mountainous terrain and altitudinous weather conditions. Here, the Bolshoy Ice Dome sits proudly as one of the largest arenas in Sochi. Shaped like a frozen drop of water, its roof is decorated with light-emitting diodes that light up in different colours. Inside, the arena is divided into two areas – the central rink and training rinks.
The sound system features 40 Funktion- One MST Horns. This installation actually played a part in the MST’s development, when Edelweiss Audio’s Andrei Kremenchugskiy visited Funktion- One HQ in the UK to hear a prototype of the speaker. Kremenchugskiy was extremely impressed but had some suggestions, which were absorbed into the development process. The fi nished product offers directivity, intelligibility and performance that set a new precedent for sports venues.
The MST Horns work in pairs – 16 groups of two MST Horns with one F221 double 21-inch bass enclosure and two in
Bolshoy Ice Dome’s roof structure. 119
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