Spartan AV Rise To An Acoustic Challenge With Help From Outline And CUK

The Llanerch Vineyard Hotel near Pontyclun in South Wales, with its beautiful surrounding grounds, is a well-known site mostly for weddings but also for hosting conferences, corporate events, galas, and parties.

There is a substantial marquee that is always there and can accommodate more than 200 guests when necessary. The pandemic had generated a significant backlog of weddings at this venue, as it did at so many other places of a similar nature, and despite its rural setting, the abrupt increase in noise levels after reopening was creating some issues with the locals.

To design, provide, and commission an installed sound system that would satisfy all the diverse needs of a contemporary multi-purpose facility while also satisfying the neighbourhood noise control standards, Spartan Audio Visual of Cardiff was consulted.

Dave Morgan is Spartan AV’s Sales & Installation Director and he remarks, “We knew from the get go that this would be a very difficult challenge, given that we were effectively working outside, with the residences just a few hundred metres away as the crow flies. I was confident we could design the best system of compromise with regards to speaker layout, limiting and control, but it was clear that in order to present a solution that all stakeholders, including bands, DJ’s and wedding parties would be happy with, the audio fidelity had to be very high.”

“This is how we settled on the Outline brand. We’d used some of their kit previously and I found they sounded on par with all of the biggest names in the industry, yet, crucially for this task, they didn’t need to be as big or as bulky as some of those counterparts. Outline gave us high clarity audio, with excellent output levels, but at a size of enclosure which almost has the volume of (much larger loudspeakers from) other brands.”

James Lawford of Outline’s UK distributor CUK Group adds, “The key to controlling noise pollution in Spartan AV’s design was the use of multiple smaller speakers, rather than an ordinary left / right system. Subsequently the marquee has been fitted with an Outline Vegas 8CX and SUB 118 rig focused on the dance floor and Charlie 4 ultra-compact loudspeakers as delays down the room. The choice and placement of loudspeakers plus the sophisticated control infrastructure still enables substantial localised SPLs where required, with excellent overall coverage throughout the space.”

Dave Morgan again: “Outline’s Charlie 4 are a great example of the power-to-quality-to-size ratio of the Outline products. We accepted early on that to get the control and even sound levels required to make the project feasible we would need to use a large number of speakers and Charlie 4 allowed us to do this without making the venue look more like a club than a wedding venue. The Charlie 4s are discreet and unimposing, yet easily deliver the volume required, with headroom to spare. I’ve personally witnessed them handle a saxophone solo without getting anywhere near their limits, which is impressive.”

“The system only functions in the way it can because of SG Audio’s 10EaZy being at the heart of it all. It’s allowed us to use an existing noise monitoring program, used at festivals by live sound engineers the world over, and send a control signal from it into the Symetrix ecosystem that allows us to trigger ‘smart’ actions based upon the noise levels in the marquee. Furthermore we can apply different rules to the bands and the DJ’s, who operate in slightly different time periods with differing restriction requirements, not to mention dealing with the other challenges posed by live music when compared to playback signals.”

“The whole system is also accessible and maintainable remotely by Spartan AV, to allow for specific event-related control when occasionally required. Local control of the system is by a pair of Symetrix Symvue touchscreens in the marquee.”