UK - Kensington Close Hotel & Spa recently completed an impressive £40m renovation in celebration of its 50th anniversary, and this extension project included new conference and banqueting suites.
But situated in a prestigious London location, just off High Street Kensington, the hotel wanted to improve its sound containment, and so brought in CP Sound's Colin Pattenden. In addition to advising on acoustic treatment the technician sought the optimum sound system for the flagship, 230 seat Balmoral event room, since this is reconfigurable between one or two spaces, and operable in theatre, classroom, party or boardroom modes.
"The council had suggested that the hotel look at sound thresholds and I put together a scenario I knew would work - based on JBL's new PRX 400 series," explained the CP Sound MD.
Introduced as a replacement for the popular MRX series, the installers specified 10 PRX412M tops, with 90° x 50° dispersion, which have been designed to provide the sensitivity, frequency response and power handling needed to address a multitude of different audio requirements.
For situations where LF extension is required CP Sound have provided five PRX418S single 18in subs, to create a system capable of generating 135 dB of full-range, high quality audio. These are powered by a combination of five Crown XLS 1500 (in bridge mode, driving the subwoofers), a Crown XLS 2000 in stereo mode, driving six tops), a Crown XLS 1000 (driving the JBL Control 28 DJ monitors) and a Crown XLS 2500 (in stereo mode driving six further top boxes).
But this tells only half the story. Because the room can be split into two, four of the PRX412M's are back facing. "If there's a wedding at one end and a dance at the other the volume levels can be adjusted accordingly," he said.
Clever processing was required to achieve this and the gain structures have been preset into a pair of dbx DriveRack PA+ processors; these were configured as two-in and four-out, run in two-way stereo mode.
Easy to set up, the device's Auto Level Wizard will fine tune the level settings of each speaker system while the Auto EQ Wizard will further optimise the sound.
A pair of AKG WMS45 Perception Wireless handheld mics were also specified. "These are simple plug-and-play mics, perfect for the task, and the DriveRack's anti-feedback filters ensure the sound remains crystal clear with very good feedback rejection, " he says.
CP Sound have also provided two DJ plug-in points, while for private events clients' iPods will often provide a further source.
