The city of Wroclaw in southwestern Poland is now home to one of the most ambitious and sophisticated multimedia fountain projects in Europe. Inaugurated on 4th June, the centerpiece of the 20 million PLN (4.6 million euro) project is a powerful geyser capable of shooting a water column of up to 30m into the air. Three smaller geysers and a range of dynamic nozzles complete with a water screen, (the first in Poland) are accompanied by a complex lighting, laser and multimedia projection system. The final piece of the puzzle is a powerful state-of-the-art PA system driven exclusively by Lab.gruppen’s flagship PLM Powered Loudspeaker Management systems supplied by Lab.gruppen’s Polish distributor, Music Info.
Renowned Polish systems integrators, Gorycki and Sznyterman, handled audio design, specification and installation. They specified a total of thirteen, 4-channel, two rack space PLM 10000Q systems with Lake Processing on board to power the entire EAW PA system, which comprises over 200 cabinets from eight different EAW and EAW Commercial ranges. The system boasts everything from the powerful KF 750 Series down to the new, compact SMS surface-mount range, and everything in between. According to Lab.gruppen’s technical applications specialist, Thomas Vestergaard, who assisted on the project, the sheer size and complexity of the PA system is one of the reasons why PLM is such an advantageous choice.
“This is a big system spread over a large area, much of which is outside and exposed to the elements including humidity from the fountains,” noted Vestergaard. “It’s a really tough job for the speakers to maintain their high performance levels under these conditions as they will be subject to corrosion and to softening of the cone over time. However, PLM already has the unique ‘load Fingerprint’ of every loudspeaker in the system saved in its LoadLibrary presets. This means that the PLMs can perform the LoadSmart load verification to ascertain system status in just 20 seconds, providing a green light for a correctly functioning driver, a yellow light for a driver that is starting to change and a red light to indicate that driver performance has dropped below acceptable parameters. If you had to test over 200 drivers individually every day, you’d never get the show started!”
“Another benefit of PLM is load surveillance,” continued Vestergaard. “To make sure the system is ‘online’ all the time, a pilot tone is installed. The pilot tone runs above the human audible range and gives you the real time status of the speaker line. If there is a problem with a connection somewhere, or a loose cable, the PLMs will locate the problem immediately.”
Vestergaard concluded by reflecting that this type of application – many different speaker systems spread over a large site in challenging climatic conditions – is where PLM can really show its true colours. “The fingerprinting makes it simple and easy to maintain individual loudspeaker performance, and the real-time monitoring makes it easy to maintain system-wide performance. As a result, all visitors/audience members enjoy the same high sound quality wherever they are in the venue because all the loudspeakers are properly controlled and working correctly at all times. It saves time and money for all concerned and improves the quality of the audio experience, which remains consistent. Everybody benefits!”