A specialist in treatments for diabetes, MannKind Pharmaceuticals needs its employees to be heard. That’s why a recent audio upgrade at one of its three campuses across the US called for Renkus-Heinz Iconyx digitally steered array loudspeakers for matters of intelligibility.
Headquartered in California, US, the biopharmaceutical company houses its technical operations team at a seperate campus in Danbury, CT. This is a busy MannKind Pharmaceuticals campus, hosting several hundred employees involved in the company’s manufacturing, engineering and quality assurance divisions.
The campus’ central meeting point is a large, multipurpose room used for everything from lunches to corporate meetings and all types of presentations. When it came to designing a new audio solution, the bright airy space posed acoustical challenges for New York-based AV consultants Cardone, Solomon and Associates.
“It’s a really nice looking space, but not great for spoken word intelligibility,” commented Richard Trombitas regional manager at Cardone, Solomon and Associates. “It’s got a fairly high ceiling, a wall of windows, and lots of reflective surfaces.”
The team needed to replace the old distributed system, which offered ‘spotty’ coverage and was often unintelligible. Integrator Colortone Audio Visual was called upon to assist with the installation.
The chosen solution comprises a single pair of Renkus-Heinz Iconyx digitally steered array loudspeakers. Dual ICX7-II stacks on either side of one wall can easily provide even coverage all the way to the back of the room.
“We had the columns custom-painted in metallic gray to match the room,” added Joe Lemischak of Colortone AV. “You can barely see them.” Custom mounts were designed to integrate the columns with the room’s existing structure.
Tracey Centofanti, director of information technology at Mannkind, finsihed: “We’ve had numerous comments from people about the difference in the way things sound in there now. People are more involved and more attentive in presentations – they can finally hear what’s being said.”
