Bowman Hall Gets a New Sound System from Bosch

Bowman Hall, located in the City of Blacktown, near Sydney, Australia is a popular venue used for all manner of productions from concerts and wedding receptions to simple meetings. It is a large, reverberant, asymmetric space with galleries on each side of the long axis, and the existing sound system was not working out.

Audio consultant Trevan Johns, of Trevan Johns and Associates Pty Ltd, was employed to design a new audio system with a level of protection and performance to allow for intuitive operation in a simple user mode, or full access to a digital mixer in concert mode.

The lower level ceilings in the gallery areas shade the central cluster and so required time-delayed loudspeakers to provide acceptable performance. This is of particular importance on the northern side of the hall, where an extension has increased the low-ceilinged area to more that 16.5' wide.

Johns specified a front-of-house loudspeaker array consisting of six Electro-Voice XLD 281 compact line-array elements with dual EVA XCS-312 cardioid subs, all with an EVA EG grid suspending them. Two Dynacord VL262 loudspeakers are installed on the proscenium wall for side fill, located beneath the 3,800mm high bulkhead. Two delay arrays are located either side of the hall; each of those consists of two groups of four Dynacord VL62 delay loudspeakers. Spaced equally, they are configured in two delay groups, front and rear.

"I worked closely with Bosch's Bryan Davidson when designing the system," says Johns. "We ran a few predictions and it looked like the E-V XLD281 cabinets would do the job the best. The result is that it sounds unbelievably good and the client is absolutely delighted."

The front-of-house array is powered by two Dynacord H5000 amplifiers (with two more driving the subs) as well as an H2500 amplifier. Delay and side fill loudspeakers are powered by a single four channel EV CPS4.5 amplifier while monitor wedges are driven by an H2500.

"The amplifiers contain all of the smarts, such as delay times, which are all done onboard," says Johns. "This was essential, as we didn't want to be placed in the position where it was done back in the front end, as we needed both simple and complex modes for the hall."

The project is based on an 8 x 8 E-V NetMax N8000 networkable digital matrix for simple mode. The EV NetMax N8000 is expandable to accept additional inputs and outputs and is controlled by a touch screen and PC.

"I had to take into account that many hall users are not qualified to control a conventional multi channel mixer based system," says Johns. "Therefore, when a relatively simple system is required, control is by touch screen, directly accessing the control protocols of the E-V NetMax N8000. This screen and its custom built GUI allow even novice users to intuitively operate the system."

Selection of modes, e.g. banquet, forum, lecture, live music or theatre etc, does not require more than a preset selection or scene recall, to configure the room in any default, with nominal gain, EQ presets and delay as required.

"Sound on Stage was the successful contractor for this project and they did a very professional job," concluded Trevan.