Job Description

Bristol Grammar School

Great Hall P.A. upgrade

We were delighted to be asked to specify and install a new audio solution for the beautiful, period, Great Hall of Bristol Grammar School.

We regularly work in architecturally sensitive buildings and pride ourselves on our expertise in providing elegant custom solutions that fulfil both the aesthetic and technical requirements of these historically important spaces.

The Bristol Grammar Schools Great Hall was built in 1877 in the late Victorian Era; Perpendicular Gothic style, it’s impressive scale and height making it still the largest first floor Hall in the United Kingdom.

We have worked with Bristol Grammar school on many projects in the past including installation of upgraded DMX distribution, and indeed have provided full production services for some of Bristol’s most prestigious and glamorous private parties held in the stunning Great Hall. 

The Schools primary requirement was to provide the hall with an audio system that delivered quality speech enhancement along with flexible, user-friendly, everyday control. The systems primary use would be for school assembly, conferencing and provision of background music. The system was not required to provide amplified live or recorded music.

We specified installing 12 K-array Viper KV52 ultra flat passive speaker units in white. These were installed with discrete brackets in each of the Halls recessed window bays to minimise their profile whilst providing optimum consistent sound levels throughout the space. Hidden in the period panelling beneath each bay we paired these with 12 ultra compact K-array KU26 subwoofers giving the hall’s sound profile a resonant and even depth and warmth.

K-array’s elegantly understated, ultra-slim and compact design literally hides cutting-edge speaker technology that rivals anything in its class. Robustly built to the highest standards this brilliant units design allowed our installation team to affect the lowest of profiles with minimal aesthetic impact upon the grade II listed hall whilst delivering maximum performance.

These were driven by three K-array KA 24 amplifiers whilst the heart of the system was provided by Yamaha’s brilliant MTX3 system controller installed with the amplifiers in the Halls organ loft housed within a securable custom built rack.

Stage-side user control was provided by a discrete MCP panel allowing simple and intuitive control over volume, source and mic input as well as simple zoning control. To provide maximum flexibility we installed a professional wireless stage router incorporating support for additional Tablet and Smartphone control and upgraded their microphone equipment with Sennheiser’s excellent Speechline system wireless microphones including, handheld, lavalier and gooseneck podium microphones. The Speechline system delivers very high-quality audio reception specifically tailored to speech reproduction. They are licence free and automatically detect and resolve any radio interference, making them the perfect user-friendly professional solution for the school.

Categories: 
Education
Categories 2: