Kiva divides and conquers at the Australian Defence Forces Academy
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: A newly-opened 1,200-seat auditorium designed to host conferences and presentations at the Australian Defence Forces Academy (ADFA) in Canberra has been outfitted with an L-Acoustics sound system. Designed by GUZ BOX design + audio and installed by L-Acoustics distributor, Hills SVL, the requirement was primarily for a system to provide vocal reinforcement, presentation sound and background music into the auditorium, which by means of sliding panels can be reconfigured as two independent 400- and 800-seat venues.
'Consultant GUZ BOX design + audio was brought in to design the audio system for the new space,' recalled Tim McCall, sales manager at L-Acoustics. 'As a fairly large space, the system needed to be able to cover the entire seated audience, both in combined mode and separate mode. And as it’s primarily a lecture theater, good intelligibility in every seat was vital.'
'Right from the beginning there were very strict criteria for architectural aesthetics, projection sight lines and the operable wall requirements of the venue,' explained Hills SVL brand manager – pro and commercial audio, Gerry Gavros. 'Due to the use of multiple projectors, it was important that the system should be as visually discreet as possible. In the early stages of planning, both column arrays and distributed speaker solutions were under consideration.
'We chose to submit an L-Acoustics system for consideration and our design team worked closely with L-Acoustics’ application engineers to offer a variable curvature line array solution.'
Hills specified an L-Acoustics Kiva system comprising three arrays of six Kiva cabinets topped with an SB15M sub – all powered and controlled by just one L-Acoustics LA4X amplified controller, which according to the designers 'allows for combined control of the arrays when the venue is in combined mode, whilst allowing each array to address distinct areas of the auditorium when it is in separate mode'.
'Everything had to be flown, so each Kiva covers one specific area of the audience, from the first to the last row,' said Damien Jhusaz, technical support engineer at Hills SVL. 'The three arrays can be used together when the room is combined, or separately when divided. It’s a very simple set up and, since there is one Kiva array taking care of each section of the audience, it delivers a very high level of intelligibility.'
'Tim Kuschel from GUZ BOX design + audio measured the system’s speech intelligibility on the last day of tuning/calibration and the values measured – an average STI of 0.75 – were exactly in line with the predicted results,' continued Mr Gavros. 'When you move through the room, it sounds exactly the same everywhere and this is an exceptional result, given the various constraints of the project.'