Directly overlooking the sea, Adventure Island is Southend-on-Sea's 40-acre fun park, with rides and 'experiences'. Traditionally, the park closes after the summer season, but this year is staying open to maximise its opportunities with a new light-show attraction for the autumn and winter evenings called Light Fantastic!, featuring character parades and exciting illuminations.
Rob Roberts, general manager of Adventure Island, spent many months preparing the new illuminations before turning his attention to the requirements for a new audio system to run with it. Roberts asked Mike Glover of the installation company ESL Systems to source Vieta's new DO-44 loudspeaker enclosures, weatherproof units that have designer looks and can be operated at low or high impedances, ideal for this application.
Custom-designed poles, styled like lamp posts, were built by Adventure Island's own workshop, using their own design of mounting brackets and cable termination points for mounting transducers and cable management.
On the advice of Andy Austen-Brown of KV2 Audio and Resolution Distribution, Vieta's UK distributor, a total of 34 Vieta units were specified. The whole system was set up as a high-impedance design, utilising Vieta's purpose-wound transformers, and driven by two Lab-Gruppen C Series 4 channel amplifiers. Control was provided by a KV2 Audio VHD pre amp, allowing source selection and a high-quality microphone input.
Austin-Brown explained; "Although the easiest thing would be just to string up multiple loudspeaker units, dotted around and producing a rather hit-or-miss result, general manager Rob Roberts wanted visitors to experience the effect of constantly walking 'through' the sound rather than in and out of it. We had to take into account the overall high ambient noise levels created by the fun rides and screaming public, as well as wind and rain. Careful consideration of placement and speaker direction have achieved his aims."
Adventure Island has acquired a new sound system that is performing above expectations, and given the park's manager the comforting knowledge that the design allows for easy expansion in the future. Installer Mike Glover was himself pleasantly surprised at the quality and coverage achieved by Vieta's DO-44s, presented in this format, which he described as the best 100V line sound system he has heard to date.
(Jim Evans)
