The waterfront venue aims to provide what it describes as "a true Florida experience", with exotic/local plants and trees, Key West styled structures, hand-built chickee huts and fresh Florida seafood. With the live stage - along with everything else - being in the open air, it is important that Guanabanas not only keeps sound levels down to permitted levels, but can prove it has done so.
"Residents will complain to the police if levels are too loud," says the venue's Matt Cahur. "We chose the Hera/Argos combination because the Argos limiter does a great job of limiting the sound levels to the threshold set on the Hera.
"Because the Hera uses a microphone to record the sound levels at the stage and records it in a data log, we use that log as proof that we were running at the levels permitted by the local authorities. That way, if there is a complaint, we have proof that we were at or below the allowable levels."
Another advantage of the Hera unit is that it will detect and log any attempts at system tampering - for example disconnection of the microphone. Most importantly, the logs can be easily consulted by any user, either directly from the Hera's front panel or saved to a computer and printed out.
Hera also offers two logic outputs that can be used to control external devices or mains cut-off if a certain threshold is being exceeded. Meanwhile, the Argos unit is an exceptionally natural sounding leveller, preventing the audio system from producing excessive levels without producing audible artefacts.
"There are not too many other units that I have found have this ability to log data and limit the sound in such a transparent way," says Cahur. "Handheld sound meters can data log, but not in this particular manner in conjunction with the limiter.
"The system works well. We had to replace the microphone, due to wear and tear, but especially when you consider the units are out in the elements, they work very well."
(Jim Evans)
