L-Acoustics Kudo in historic Helsinki venue
L-Acoustics Kudo installation in Old Students House, Helsinki
22 June 2010
Finland - L- Acoustics' Finnish distributor Starlike has supplied a new sound reinforcement system to the Old Student House, a multipurpose hall in the centre of Helsinki dating back to 1870.
The installation features five Kudo line source cabinets and an SB28 sub bass unit per side, with a 12XT coaxial providing centre-fill, driven by five LA8 amplified controllers.
As the venue is protected by the Finnish National board of Antiquities, any changes to the building or its structure were strictly forbidden. "My mission was to find a high quality system for this very demanding venue," says Old Student House sound engineer Sami Ahonen. "Any acoustic treatment is forbidden, and the stone walls and hard wood floor create a very powerful and long reverberation."
One of the venue's main requirement was to have an angle of horizontal coverage of 90° or less to avoid unwanted spillage to the side walls, something Ahonen found difficult to create during demos of numerous loudspeaker products. "Finally I was introduced to Kudo, which has three different modes of horizontal coverage: 50/110° or 80°," he says. "It's one of the few systems in the world which is capable of adjusting the width coverage. Needless to say, with Kudo it was possible to cut down the unwanted reverberation and problems caused by it."
Ahonen and his team used Kudo's K-Louver Modular Directivity Technology to adjust the horizontal directivity to 80° in the two lowest cabinets in the array, tightening the top three boxes up to 50°. "This has worked really well," he says. "The lower cabinets create an even coverage at the front, while the top cabinets throw further away, avoiding excess spill into the walls."
Kudo's low frequency capabilities were another important factor for the venue, allowing them to obtain the greatest possible coherence. "We've made a few adjustments with the LA8 preset," says Ahonen. "Right now we're using Kudo with the 25Hz preset, meaning a great deal of the low frequency energy is actually coming from the Kudos, with the SB28s delivering the very bottom end.
"This great venue is historic and valuable and it is so nice we now have a great sounding PA too." concludes Ahonen.
(Jim Evans)
Tag Cloud
historic Helsinki venue sound system Old Student House Kudo cabinets side LA8 forbidden walls create reverberation horizontal coverage unwanted Ahonen low frequency preset great
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