ANZAC Hall Prince Alfred College, Adelaide

INSTALLATION

Adelaide’s Prince Alfred College (PAC), one of Australia’s leading private boys’ colleges, celebrated 150 years since its foundation this year. As part of the festivities, the college has upgraded it 800 seat theatre, ANZAC Hall, with new audio, lighting and control systems installed by integrator Andy J Sound.

PAC sought an audio consultant’s recommendation from Adelaide Sound Hire’s Peter Morris for a PA system that met their requirements and modest budget.

After reviewing a number of systems, Peter selected Martin Audio’s WPM Wavefront system, incorporating six elements a side with a pair of SX118 subs, to be driven by Martin’s IK81 DSP amplifier, set to recall its presets remotely via an Extron control unit.

Tim Bekker, Senior Programmer at Andy J Sound, used this remote control capability to enable different sub and top configurations, dependent on what mode the hall is being used in, while still maintaining a single interface for the audio, vision, and lighting systems.

The school chose an Allen & Heath dLive as their FOH audio console, feeding directly into the Martin amplifier. Stage monitoring is controlled via the Allen & Heath app on an iPad, which drives six QSC K10.2 active wedges. A package of microphones including MiPro ACT7 series radio mics rounded off the audio upgrade.

The client added a third Epson L Series to their two existing Epson projectors, focussing to a 13m x 5m scrim. The feeds to the projectors are controlled via an Extron DTP 10 x 8 matrix switcher, allowing a huge variety of physical input points in the hall. In addition to the projectors, output patch points feed overflow monitors, confidence monitors, recording, and streaming.

An MA2 on PC Command Wing was the chosen lighting control system, feeding an 8-port node via Art-Net. Local supplier Showtrek installed motorised bars to expand the lighting infrastructure, and made modifications to the existing stage winch systems.

New lighting fixtures chosen included Quad 18 LED Pars, Cyc2 RGBAL, LED Fresnels, LED profiles and Martin Rush Par2 RGBW Zooms from Show Technology. Acme XA400s were chosen as a LED moving head Profile.

The greatest challenge in the project was to maintain constant engagement to ensure issues were picked up as quickly as possible. Chappell Builders in Adelaide liaised with AJ Sound’s Head of Commercial Sales Luke “Phasey” Hattam, who watched the project like a hawk, picking up a number of infrastructure challenges that required quick resolution.

The effective communication between Chappell, Andy J Sound and Showtrek was critical to the success of this project.

“The ANZAC Hall refurbishment was the culmination of several years planning and development,” stated Dan Woolford, AV Technical Assistant at Prince Alfred College.

“Upgrades and redevelopments were undertaken in preparation for the college’s Sesquicentenary celebrations this year, honouring the College’s past, present and future, and recognising our 150 years of educating boys.”

“Our vision was always to create a user-friendly integrated platform that was also easy for our students to use and learn with,” Dan continued. “Tim, Phasey, and myself wanted to design a system that could run in both basic operation mode for general teaching staff use and advanced mode for my use or contracted experienced technicians.”

“The basic mode for the system has been a game changer for me, as it means with the push of one single button, I can quickly give teaching staff access to projectors, wireless mics, lights, and the sound system.

“This frees me from having to attend every single general day-to-day workshop, classroom, or lecture activity across the three Schools within the College, allowing me to prepare and plan effectively for our big ticket events such as musicals, theatre performances, bands and special assemblies.

“For these events, I use Advanced Mode and can capitalise on the full extent of the new audio, video, and lighting capabilities, which as you can imagine, the boys love.”

“Concert Mode (Advanced Mode), gives me greater control of the system, using the Allen and Heath dLive for audio, the MA2 onPC on Command Wing for lighting and Extron Crosspoint for switching video.

“The overall outcome has far exceeded my expectations and all the team at Prince Alfred College are absolutely thrilled with the end result, including me!

“The team from Andy J Sound have been completely professional to work with over the past few months and have catered for all my needs. They have been completely flexible throughout every part of the build, fitting in with the busy schedule and divergent needs of an operational school.”

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CX Magazine – Sept 2019   Entertainment technology news and issues for Australia and New Zealand – in print and free online www.cxnetwork.com.au

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