By Mark Frink
The Jacksonville (Florida) Symphony resides in Jacoby Symphony Hall (1,800 capacity) in the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, sharing a large lobby with the proscenium Moran Theater (3,000 capacity). Patrons of both theaters share one lobby, including its 70-volt overhead loudspeakers, requiring that sound operators for both venues coordinate their announcements so they don’t step on each other.
Many Jacoby Hall productions require late-arriving patrons be seated during a break in the program, so an audio feed of the programming accompanies a large flat-screen video image of the stage near the lobby door. In the past, this was accomplished using a “hot spot” loudspeaker on a straight microphone stand, like the one regularly used for symphony pops shows by the conductor.
Besides getting knocked over by patrons and ushers, this waist-high approach was plagued by poor sound quality and minimal coverage. While there are many two-way full-range surface-mount options, the symphony wanted both high-intelligibility announcements and high-fidelity foreground music reproduction, which is where the EX-S6 compact loudspeaker from the Biamp Desono line comes into the picture. As part of the production team for the symphony, I recently implemented an EX-S6 as an upgrade to the previous loudspeaker.
Read the full review at: ProSoundWeb
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