Tannoy at Oklahoma's Edmond Memorial High School

Edmond Memorial High School, in Edmond, Oklahoma is a traditional high school with a progressive outlook. The school places an emphasis on working with the community beyond its walls to develop both its curriculum and extracurricular programs. Over the past decade EMHS has undergone a series of improvements and upgrades, including the renovation of the main auditorium and the installation of a cutting edge audio system featuring a variety of Tannoy loudspeaker systems.

"It was an existing space, but they basically gutted it and then redid everything," says EMHS' junior/senior principal, Earl Kirkpatrick. And while Edmond Memorial High School is not specifically designated as a performing arts school, Kirkpatrick adds, it does have a reputation statewide for its arts programs. Correspondingly, EMHS wanted the quality of their renovated auditorium and the systems installed within it to match that reputation. "That was our goal when we looked into everything-- the construction, the seating, the lighting and the sound. We wanted every aspect to be top of the line for our students, parents and patrons."

Kirkpatrick stresses the auditorium is very much a multi-function venue. "It is used for musicals and concerts, and our drama department is in their on almost a daily basis working on the stage, but we also use it for class meetings for freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, guest speakers, as well as for special events for the school and, occasionally, the community." It also serves as a regular venue for Edmond school district meetings and professional development events.

The project originated with PMK Consultants' Jerrold Stevens, says A/V consultant Dave Stearns, formerly of Dallas' PMK office, the design firm on the project-- Stearns has since left the company to form Sound Endeavors, an independent A/V consulting firm based in Frisco, Texas. "Jerrold Stevens did the original design and got the thing out the door for construction, but when he moved to PMK international in Dubai I took over to oversee the job and tune the system. High-Tech-Tronics Inc. was the install contractor." The architectural firm on the project was Oklahoma City based Architects and Planners, GSB Inc.

To meet the needs of everyone using the space PMK specified a combination of Tannoy VQ 100s, VQ 60s, V12s and CVS 6s for the project, with the aim of providing superior reinforcement of speech, live and pre-recorded music for any and all of the applications the school and community intended for the auditorium.

Fixed approximately 24' off the ground and ten feet below the ceiling, two Tannoy VQ 100s make up the center cluster of the LCR system, explains Stearns. Two more VQ 60s are located to at the extreme right and left of the proscenium. Directly below, two V12s -- one per side -- act as down fills. A number of third-party front fill speakers are also built into the stage lip. "They looked like generic home theatre in-wall speaker and they tended to overlap a little more than they should. In the end, though, I was able to use them as a localization source, but we would have preferred to see the Tannoy IS 52s in there."

Elsewhere, in the back of house areas, the workshop, dressing rooms, lobby area, and hallways, Tannoy CVS 6s are used exclusively to provide distributed audio throughout the venue. The system also incorporates a comprehensive package of Sennheiser microphones, a third-party monitor system, a Yamaha LS 9 console, two BSS Soundweb London DSPs and a suite of QSC CX Series amps to drive the Tannoy VQs, V12's and CVS 6s.

With the VQs covering most of the room, choosing the V12s was a matter of specifying a companion product to provide down fill in what was a very small area that needed help. "Like rows five to nine -- an area just about eight chairs wide," says Stearns. "And after I listened to the system I went, okay the V12s are going to be high passed way up. I don't need it adding any mid/bass to the room -- let's just fill in what's missing."

In the spirit of specifying product based on need, PMK's design called for the dual concentric CMS 601 DCs but went with Tannoy CVS 6s purely on a cost-saving basis. The lobby did present some challenges, he says, owing primarily to its having three different ceiling heights; ranging from 8'high at the entryway, to 15' across the roughly 1,800 sq. ft. middle section of the space, to roughly 24' high in each of two 2,500-sq.-ft. side areas that are open to the rest of the space and built to accommodate separate orchestra and band rehearsal spaces.

Tannoy was specified for the build from very early on, Stearns says. "All the way back to the earliest version of the EASE model in 2008 -- As soon as we had the data on the Tannoy VQs, they were in there. This is one of the first US installs of the product."

As a product, a mid/high box along the lines of Tannoy's VQ boxes is something Stearns says there has been an appetite for in the industry for a very long time. "The reason for that is when you take a traditional two-way box -- a twelve and a horn, or whatever -- you can only time align it on axis. Once you get above or below axis, one driver or the other is closer to you, so you have an off-axis phase problem. The only way to fix that is to put highs and mids in the same horn. It's been tried a bunch of different ways. A lot of the reason for horn loading the mids is that we wanted to have them have the same directivity as the high frequencies. The problem is that one driver can't do all that without blowing up."

The Tannoy VQ series addresses that issue comprehensively, Stearns says. "This is highs firing through mids -- two compression drivers -- one firing through the other one and using the same magnet structure. So the two diaphragms are within fractions of an inch of each other. With a passive crossover network it sums quite well in phase, so we get highs and mids in the same horn, the off-axis response is real smooth and everything falls off together."

While the core benefit offered by the product is substantial in terms of intelligibility, directivity and overall control, there are only a handful of similar products available on the market, Stearns says. "And of the ones that are available this is the one I have a preference for currently."