The three resorts in Chungcheong Province in South Korea operated by Resom Resort – including Splas Resom, a membership spa resort in Deoksan-myeon, Jincheon-gun, and Forest Resom, situated in a dense tree forest, which offers healing through nature and water – were acquired by construction company Hoban Co in 2018. A tender was issued for refurbishment of the existing Splas facility and construction of a new building with Martin Audio distributor Sama Sound and dealer, Asea Sound submitting the successful bid.

The loudspeakers that had originally been specified were not Martin Audio, however. ‘We worked hard to get this changed to Martin Audio,’ explains Sama Sound Product Manager, Edan Kwon. ‘With the help of a presentation we were able to show the company and its engineer the advantages of the new system design over other brands.’

Martin Audio’s Wavefront Precision Compact (WPC) was a match for the previously specified system, meeting all the same performance criteria. ‘This system pretty much decided itself,’ Kwon says. ‘It was the same with our SXC118 subwoofer; since a cardioid subwoofer had been specified, we designed the system with SXC118.’

From this point, the scalable Wavefront Precision offered advantages that none of the other previously considered systems had. ‘The venue was constructed without regard for architectural acoustics, so there were consequently many sound reflections, especially from the venue back wall, as well as from backstage. The Hard Avoid feature [in the proprietary Display software] helped us to control those reflections, while the customer was more than satisfied at how the SXC118 cardioid subwoofer reduced the radiation behind.’

The Martin Audio loudspeakers – including many from the CDD series – have been installed in a number of multipurpose banquet halls mainly used for corporate events, seminars and workshops. The system needed to be sufficiently versatile to handle a number of source feeds, ranging from background music, voice announcements and occasionally live music.

Set in hangs of five elements a side in the main Juniper Hall, accompanied by four SXC118 subs in cardioid, WPC is driven in two-box resolution from an iKon iK81 and four iK42 amplifiers. A pair of LE200 wedges have been provided for stage monitoring.

Elsewhere, in the Rosemary Hall the specification moves to a pair each of Martin Audio W8VDQ and SXC118 subs, with two further CDD8B acting as delay speakers – powered from a further four-channel iK42.

The Geranium Hall sees a pair each of CDD8B as main loudspeakers and CDD5B as delays, with four CDD8B in the Iris & Marigold Hall, and a pair of the same speaker in each of the Sage Hall, Jasmine Hall and Verbena Hall spaces.

Overseeing the project for Sama Sound was sales manager, Jong Hwa Seo, while Seung Hwan Kim designed the system. Hong Geun Kim took charge of the speaker installations and system tunings.

‘Since the venue is mostly rented, I wanted to choose equipment that was familiar to visiting engineers,’ says engineer, Seung Hyuk Im. ‘Martin Audio was one of my considerations from the beginning and it provided me with the best system solution. I have experienced [the brand], both from exhibitions and also when I was working in a rental company. The sound is so clear and punchy, and the balance extremely good. Engineers who came in to rent systems for their events were all completely satisfied.’

The optimisation and Hard Avoid features had worked really well, he adds. ‘I was also fully satisfied with the performance of the SXC118 cardioid subwoofer. Since we are a resort, the aesthetic was also important. Martin Audio speakers look classy and fabulous, but are also small enough to be fairly unobtrusive – particularly, the cardioid subwoofer as it is not easy to find one this small.’

Following the commissioning, the contracting team has moved on to Forest Resom, where a similar Martin Audio system has been specified for installation.