Among the facilities at the Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel is the expansive Potomac Ballroom. Featuring a 15ft-high ceiling, the space can be used as a single room accommodating 1,200 seated guests, or can be divided into two or three smaller sections. Recently, the hotel improved its functionality and appeal with the installation of a new, high-performance audio system.
Along with other enhancements, the venue’s management sought a sound system that could be adapted to any of the room’s configurations, and rival or surpass the performance of rented sound systems. Key to the solution are 45 Renkus-Heinz CX62, two-way, Complex Conic loudspeakers.
Kendall Mangun, Engineer and Sales Manager at LVW Electronics, has worked with the Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel and similar hotels and convention facilities for more than 35 years, and had designed and installed the previous system in the Potomac Ballroom ten years ago. But with significant architectural changes to the space – particularly the ceiling – and higher-performance requirements, the team needed a new approach.
‘When we received the ceiling design from the architect using a pattern of new beams, we didn’t see how we were going to make a working system and still hide the loudspeakers in the ceiling structure as requested,’ he explains. ‘The first design draft had a 6-inch gap between the ceiling beams, and after an exhaustive product search, we found that the Renkus-Heinz CX62 box could provide the SPL and the bandwidth needed, but it was almost eight inches wide.’
The new ceiling structure is comprised of a non-traditional, fibreglass/insulated Softspan Beam system from Arktura covered with a decorative cladding. These fibreglass sheets have been folded into beams, and the beams are supported from a hanging structure. There are hundreds of beams running across the entire ceiling.
Mangun worked to convince the hotel owners to give an 8-inch beam gap staggered across the ceiling to accommodate the enclosures. ‘After making that design tweak to the beams, the Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers slip right into the space and out of sight,’ he reports.
‘After a call from Don Heisler from Signal Marketing, I was intrigued,’ says Renkus-Heinz Western Regional Sales Manager, Garrison Parkin. ‘My initial thought was why aren’t they simply using traditional high-powered ceiling speakers? We created some acoustic simulations to confirm that we had adequate coverage and the horsepower needed to create a top-performing system.’
‘I’ve worked with Mangun for nearly 30 years and we both believe in the power that Renkus-Heinz speakers provide,’ Heisler continues. ‘Although it’s a non-traditional installation for Renkus-Heinz speakers, it was clear that the CX62 was the right fit for the ballroom’s acoustic needs.’
The CX62 (passive) and CA62 (active) loudspeakers offer a space-efficient, compact design that maintains full-range performance. The loudspeakers’ Complex Conic horn provides strong pattern control with low distortion, while a heavy-duty, 6.5-inch woofer with carbon fibre cone can handle 400W of programme power and the integral passive crossover eliminates the need for a separate active crossover and bi-amplification.
‘The new ceiling system provides great acoustics,’ says Mangun. ‘Each beam is open to the overhead structure through a gap, so the ceiling actually captures the sound in a channel and absorbs the sound before it bounces back down. The acoustics in the space are wonderful because of the beams. The Renkus-Heinz speakers are easy to hang and install, they fit the ceiling perfectly, and the sound quality is excellent.’
The CX62 enclosures offer several rigging points to make installation quick and easy. The LVW team used wire loop gripple hangers to loop over the beam/strut and hoisted the loudspeaker up to the correct elevation and position.
‘The ballroom now sounds like a high-end theatre,’ Mangun says. ‘You can walk around the entire ballroom and it’s beautifully covered. Everybody’s thrilled with the results. The Renkus-Heinz CX62 enclosures provided the exact sound solution we needed.’
More: www.renkus-heinz.com
