Harman solutions fill the BGS

INDIA: The Bangalore Gayana Samaja (BGS), which is reportedly the oldest operational sabhā in India, had suffered from a sound reinforcement system that was not fit for purpose, only covering a quarter of the 600-seat hall, while the rest were subject to reflection from walls. To solve this issue, a new sound solution comprising systems from Harman brands JBL, BSS, Crown and Soundcraft was installed by the Harman India team along with Bangalore based systems integrator Waveguide Systems.

The new main PA setup consists of two JBL MD55 loudspeakers and a pair of ASB6115 subwoofers. Serving as front-fills are four JBL AC15 cabinets, while two AC25 are employed as under balcony-fills and four AC28s provide the upper balcony-fill. These speakers are all driven by Crown DCi network amplifiers, with the inputs fed from a BSS Blu link. Stage monitoring is courtesy of JBL’s STX 812M, powered by a Crown XTi4002 amplifier. A Soundcraft Si Expression 2 has been installed for mixing and processing for the entire solution is via a BSS Blu 100 with HiQnet Audio Architect software.

‘We had to deliver a system which would not only overcome the venue’s architectural challenges but also be cost effective as BGS is a free entry venue,’ explained Sunil Karanjikar, application engineer at Harman Professional India. ‘The beams could not take the weight of heavy line array speakers and the reflection from walls varied the sound impression for the audience.’

‘The system was designed in a non-conventional manner,’ said Sohan KP of Waveguide Systems. ‘Lightweight speakers that fit the requirement were suspended from the support structure and tuned to reach the seats with the least amount of reflections from the walls. Use of an analogue mixer limited their number of outputs and processing. Though the technical staff at BGS was not comfortable using digital mixing consoles, we were successful in convincing them to switch to digital. We knew that this task would take time but training and hand holding for the first shows made the transition easy.’

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