The year-long renovation of the Simpsonville Arts Center in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with an opening event that revealed its auditorium capacity has been reduced from 900 to 380 – with the space used for larger, more comfortable seating and more legroom – the installation of acoustic panelling and updated sound and lighting.
Also part of the new set-up is an RF Venue wireless infrastructure, comprising two Distro9 HDR antenna systems, able to accommodate the Arts Center’s 16 channels of Sennheiser G4 wireless microphones, and a cross-polarised, hybrid design Diversity Fin Antenna to assure that there will never be any dropouts.
The RF Venue equipment was installed by Productions Unlimited, which also designed and installed a new TW Audio PA system with Danley Sound Labs subs, and an Allen & Heath Avantis front-of-house console.
The renovated venue gives the city a quality locus for performing arts, including a second home for the Mill Town Players, who will stage their inaugural season of six theatre shows here.
‘The city had been looking at creating a performing arts space for some time, and this was an older city school building that was a good fit for that, but the wireless audio was a particular concern’ says Jordan Tripp, A/V Department Manager at Productions Unlimited. ‘The venue management wanted as much of it as they could fit – in this case 16 channels – and the system had to be able to negotiate the architecture of an older building.’
Perhaps most concerning of all was that the Simpsonville Arts Center is next door to First Baptist Church Simpsonville, which has a large stage, auditorium and balcony, and uses what Tripp estimated is more than 60 channels of wireless microphones for its services.
‘A pair of multi-zone RF Venue Distro9 HDRs gave us the channel count we needed, and it let us split the 16 channels into two bands for better management and maximum system stability, as well as consolidating all of the receivers into a single rack,’ he says, crediting Productions Unlimited Senior A/V Systems Engineer Jim Breitmeier for completion of the audio system design, including having the foresight to divide the Sennheiser G4 wireless into two frequency bands.
‘But we also had to keep an eye on all of the RF next door. The Diversity Fin antenna was the perfect solution for that – its cross-polarised hybrid design pretty much eliminates the possibilities for dropouts. It’s the anchor for what is an incredibly stable, rock-solid RF environment here now.’
More: http://rfvenue.com
