When you think of a professionally installed sound system you do not immediately think it would be in a school. Indeed, the first thing that would pop into your mind would most likely be a live music venue or a conference centre or possibly even a theatre. However, let’s not forget that school students need to hear what’s going on as well, and when there are over 1 800 of them at an assembly or screaming and shouting at a sporting event, rest assured a simple system is just not going to cut it.

One company that specialises in audio installations of all kinds, including those for schools, is Surgesound based in the northern suburbs of Joburg. Situated conveniently between Midrand and Johannesburg, they are the sole importers and distributors of brands such as EAW, Lab Gruppen and Van Damme Cabling. – They took on the installation at the newly built multi-purpose hall at the Redhill School in Morningside, Sandton.

I was met there by Ruan Joubert, Technical Product Manager for Surgesound, and he was kind enough to show me around the installation for this review.

Redhill School is a “105-year old, co-educational, multi-faith, independent school’ and its heritage shows as the property is huge and took quite a while to navigate through to the hall. In terms of size the hall is 40 x 20m with a 3.6sec RT60 decay, it can accommodate over 1 800 students, and as previously mentioned, was designed to be multifunctional which means that it will be used for everything from assemblies to sporting events and everything in between. That being the case, it’s not surprising that coverage was the main focus of the installation. It will also primarily be used as a speech reinforcement system although it was designed to handle events of all kinds as well, including live bands.

Getting to the technical specifications of the system, an active line array from Italian manufacturer FBT was selected as the core loudspeaker array. Consisting of two 1200W Mitus 212FSA DSP active subwoofers and six 900W Mitus 206LA DSP active mid/high enclosures per side (the system is a dual array) flown high above the hall floor. Each array gets around 100 degrees of horizontal coverage and 10 degrees vertical per mid/high box, which means that there is about 60 degrees of vertical coverage each side.

The amount of enclosures and their configuration was selected specifically for the hall’s coverage requirements. Taking a walk around the venue I found that there was indeed a very even dispersion, no doubt aided by the inherent reverberation of the large empty hall, but even none the less. The quality of the sound was consistent and clear and I’m sure that when 1 800 students are in the hall, the sound will clean up nicely.

System processing duties are all handled by an FBT DLM26 Digital Loudspeaker Management unit, which was installed into a rack in the control room, for easy access from the engineer operating the analogue console. An analogue console was selected because it is easy to use and it best matched the audio requirements of the school. Tying it all together is cable from the London-based cable manufacturer Van Damme, which is also a Surgesound product.

Probably the strongest point of the Redhill School system is its simplicity and security, ensuring a long life with minimal maintenance. In actual fact, the entire system consists of a mixer, two CD players, the two arrays and the DSP unit, plus the 16-channel wallbox (16 mono lines and four returns) and cabling. The subwoofers are flown above the mid/high boxes, keeping them away from idle hands and the wall box is conveniently located dead centre in the hall making for easy access.

To conclude, I think that Surgesound has provided a fantastic system to meet the budget and coverage needs of Redhill School and, as an audio engineer who is also a parent; the school is somehow more appealing!

by Greg Bester

ProSystems magazine – 3rd Quarter 2012