Ampco Belgium sales manager Steven Kemland says: "It is ironic that the smallest line array in the market should open its account in one of the largest, multi-purpose venues in the country."
Built in 1933 (and recently augmented with a new building) the main arena - with its distinctive green roof - holds around 17,000, with the new space offering about half that capacity.
But it is on three floors of the public, general concourse areas that technical manager Geert Torfs has made his boldest move, as part of an upgrade plan implemented when he joined the operation more than a year ago.
Optimised by the Martin Audio Engineer DSP, the OmniLine micro line array takes a wide range of feeds - from delayed sound off the concert stage, to earlier background music from a satellite Digibox (when Engineer's BassCreator algorithm kicks in to beef up the low end).
Equally the system can deliver important announcements to the arriving crowds, link into the voice evacuation procedure, pump out potent dance music, and even play pre-recorded ringtone messages, stored in the NION 3 digital matrix, which will be coupled to the fire system.
The 72 Omniline cabinets have been designed and distributed around the arena in four clusters of four and four clusters of six (on the ground floor), two clusters of eight (on the first floor) and four clusters of four (on the second floor).
As part of the same contract, Ampco Belgium has taken the opportunity to create a simpler network for the auditorium. A separate optical fibre system spans the venue, to keep cable runs as short as possible, and a wireless tablet PC links in with the network. In the upper balcony are 14 stacks of classic Martin Audio F2 enclosures.
(Jim Evans)
