Since its opening, the Congress Center has hosted numerous glittering occasions, including the International Conference of Foreign Ministers on Iraq Security and the World Economic Forum Conference. At the heart of this gathering place for politicians and power brokers, operated by the German Maritim Hotel Company, is its 2,000 seat main hall, fully equipped for world-wide broadcast and teleconferencing.
With a demand for high speech intelligibility and clear sightlines for TV cameras, its main stage has been equipped with a Renkus-Heinz Iconyx IC24 digitally steerable loudspeaker system, supplemented by ceiling loudspeakers for background music. The twin arrays form the audio centrepiece of an extensive AV installation that also includes 11 combinable meeting rooms and six VIP suites.
The complete technical installation including audio and video systems was carried out by Cairo-based system integrator TECO (Telecommunications Engineering Consultant Office). Magdy Sidhom of TECO comments: "The main challenge was to provide a very high level of speech intelligibility across this huge room, but without using large loudspeakers that would obscure sight-lines for delegates and television cameras. With a conventional system in a hall like this a lot of acoustic energy is dispersed as reflections from walls and ceilings. With Iconyx we were able to focus the sound on the seating alone, and the result in architectural terms is close to perfect: the system is invisible unless you look really hard."
TECO's design team made full use of the Iconyx system's slender proportions, wide horizontal dispersion pattern and digital beam steering. The system was configured using Renkus-Heinz's PC-based BeamWare software, which interacts with each of the two IC24's 24 coaxial drivers via their individual Class D amplifiers and DSP units via Cat-5 cable.
By focusing each driver's beam on a specific horizontal angle, a single pair of IC24 units - supported by DR18-2 subwoofers for full-range reproduction - provides high-intelligibility speech coverage across the hall without the need for visually intrusive loudspeaker clusters or line array hangs.
To complete the project, which included all the AV, conference, sound and master clock equipment, on schedule, TECO had five on-site engineers and 22 trained technicians working 24 hours a day.
Alongside the Iconyx system is a video network including Barco and NEC projectors, Draper screens, Extron switching equipment, Crestron control systems and Auditel Conference equipment.
(Claire Beeson)
