Community Provides Loud and Clear Sound for Brazil's Expo Center Norte

The Expo Center Norte, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is one of Latin America's most versatile and comprehensive exhibition and convention centers. The venue first opened in 1993 and has over 98,000-sq.-m. of space for hosting a wide range of events, including trade shows, conventions, and corporate events.

Roberto Benedito from the Expo Center Norte requested a proposal for upgrading the venues sound system from Sao Paulo-based systems integrator Soundvision. The original sound system was unintelligible and event attendees could not hear important announcements, which was of great concern to the venue's management.

According to Antonio Tadeu Torquato, general director at Soundvision, "We immediately narrowed the choice for the project down to Community's R-Series, because of the output, directivity, and intelligibility they provide." To demonstrate the performance of the R-Series, Soundvision installed a single R.5HP loudspeaker in one of the Expo Center Norte's convention halls. The venue managers from the Expo Center Norte were extremely impressed with the performance of the loudspeaker and commissioned Soundvision to install the new Community sound system.

The final system design for the exhibition halls included 44 Community R.5HPT 12" loudspeaker systems. The three-way, coaxial, horn-loaded design of the R.5HP provides the high sensitivity and exceptional mid-range clarity required for the noisy and reverberant environments found in convention centers like the Expo Center. The light grey loudspeaker enclosures also blend well with the walls and ceiling of the convention center, making the system visually unobtrusive. Fewer loudspeakers were utilized for the new sound system, but the overall coverage and intelligibility was dramatically improved, the company says.

The public address system was designed so that announcements could be made from the main control center or from one of ten zones positioned in different locations throughout the five separate halls that make up the convention center. The system was also required to be very easy to operate as staff need to be able to make announcements in each of the different zones.

The Community loudspeakers are powered by Crown CTs 4200 amplifiers and Soundvision opted for Harman Professional's IDX control system.

The system was utilized for the first time during the Expomusic Show, which took place in September 2012. Antonio Tadeu Torquato noted "Roberto Benedito and the management of Expo Center Norte are extremely pleased with the performance of the new sound system, and so are we."