The Belfast MAC, Ireland’s latest arts venue, has had its newly designed production infrastructure equipped and installed by Rea Sound, Martin Audio’s Irish distributors. Rea Sound was appointed as specialist for the technical fit-out which included a Martin Audio W3 theatre PA system.
The 350-seat main auditorium on the theatre’s ground floor is an adaptable, modern theatre space with tiered, retractable, seating, while upstairs on the first floor, the 120 seat studio theatre offers flexibility for both seated and standing audiences and is ideal for press launches and networking events.
The design specification was compiled by consultant Carr & Angier, who had selected Martin Audio’s W3 arrayable three-way compact trapezoid system for the main auditorium. The original design called for four W3’s on each side of the main auditorium’s stage– however, this later changed and three W3’s on each side, along with a Martin Audio AQ10, were deployed instead.
The system is powered by the Martin Audio MA range of amplifiers located in the dedicated amp rack. These provide separate channel feeds to each of the house PA speakers as well as the infills and effects speakers, which include three Martin Audio AQ10’s plus four ‘floating’ Martin Audio Blackline F10+ and two F12+. Custom patch panels allow for the effects speakers to be positioned according to their requirement for the production at hand since the space is designed for multi-functional use and signals need to be routed to speaker locations throughout the venue.
At the heart of the system lies one of two Allen & Heath IDR units, allowing for full control on all inputs and outputs of the PA speaker channels. A touch screen controller is located in the main auditorium control room — allowing the user to select either pre-determined presets or their own.What’s more, supplied for the audio engineer is an Allen & Heath I-Live T122 digital console and IDR48 stagebox again allow for ease of use and preset recalls.
The upstairs PA system also utilises the Martin Audio W3 cabinets flown from the grid horizontally. An Allen & Heath I-Live R72 digital console and IDR16 stagebox again allow for ease of use and preset recalls.
Elsewhere, Rea Sound has provided a range of other services, including a full backstage communications system, allowing for paging from three fixed positions and any of the stage managers desk positions, as well as the show relay mic signals also under IDR control from both venues to all dressing rooms, the IR systems in both venues and voice description systems in both venues.
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www.allen-heath.com
