Renkus-Heinz supplies new Doha airport
Published: MEA
QATAR: When it is officially opened, Doha’s new airport will boast a sound system featuring hundreds of steerable line array speakers from Renkus-Heinz. The airport has been equipped with various different models from the Iconyx range.
‘There are 182 Iconyx line arrays in the first phase,’ said Renkus-Heinz Middle East sales manager Norbert Bau. ‘They are all networked so you can access them remotely.’
The networking provided the biggest challenge for the project and offered the manufacturer the opportunity to try a unique way of configuring the network. ‘We managed to get most of this work done remotely. It was the first time that we have done something like this remotely, but it was the only chance we had to do it,’ explained Mr Bau. ‘Nobody believed it would be possible to locate everything, but it was the best option and it worked fine. We came onsite to double check if we were right or not with the remote configuration, and it worked perfectly.’
The airport is clearly taking its audio system very seriously. Areas within the new terminal have already been acoustically treated to ensure it sounds dry. This combined with the steerable speakers should be of great benefit for intelligibility when it opens its door to passengers. ‘They wanted to have the best and latest of everything for the airport,’ said Mr Bau. ‘The quality of workmanship for the whole project has been really impressive.’
While the installation is still at an early stage, Mr Bau is certainly pleased with how it is sounding. ‘It is working well so far, but the final testing is still pending,’ noted the Middle East sales manager. ‘We are happy because it sounds extremely good, but there is still a lot of potential to improve everything with the final commissioning.’
Renkus-Heinz has already delivered a significant number of further Iconyx speakers to be installed in the next phases at the new Doha International Airport.