Founded more than a century ago, the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) is a global socio-spiritual organisation based upon the Hindu teachings of Bhagwan Swaminarayan. With a worldwide network of mandirs (temples), the organisation’s crown jewel is Swaminaryan Akshardham in Delhi, created by more than 11,000 artisans and volunteers.
The fountains at Akshardham, known as ‘Sahaj-Anand’ (‘Subtle Bliss’ or ‘Eternal Bliss’), are one of the temple’s main attractions. The arena surrounding the fountains seats around 3,500 visitors, who are treated nightly to an orchestrated multimedia performance that offers ‘an informative and inspiring journey using an ancient scriptural story to highlight the moral values inspired by Hindu’. The show features an interplay of water, fire, lasers and lights, video projection, narration and music, including a massive surround sound system employing a range of Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers.
Created by BAPS’ own design team, the system’s audio is comprised of 20 Varia Vax101-15 and VAX101-22 modular point source line arrays, along with 20 STX-LA/9W line array loudspeakers. Low-frequency reinforcement is handled by 20 CFX15S and 12 DRS18-2B subwoofers.
As BAPS’ Vipul Vaghela explains, the arena’s configuration is anything but typical, and sound system design presented a number of unique challenges: ‘The arena is a step well, and the seating rakes downward from the back row, with the fountain located in the center and below ground level,’ says Vaghela. ‘Sound sources are located both at the fountain, and at the projection wall, and both of these primary sound sources must be in sync.’
Reflected sound was another issue to contend with: ‘The show requires a rather elaborate surround sound experience, and the stone walls of many of the adjacent buildings created a major challenge in keeping reflected sound to a minimum,’ Vaghela observes.
This confluence of technical issues was instrumental in BAPS engineering team’s decision to go with Renkus-Heinz technology: ‘We have worked with Renkus-Heinz on similar projects in the past, with excellent results, and we were confident that the technology was ideally suited to this type of challenge’ says Vaghela. ‘The Varia technology enabled us to design a system that would provide very precise coverage to only the audience areas, while minimising the sound to areas that would generate problematic reflections.’
Since opening in November 2014, the Fountains at Akshardham have educated and entertained countless guests from all over the world.
More: www.renkus-heinz.com
