One of the primary objectives for the complex is to showcase pioneering technology which enhances a world-class convention centre encompassing 32 meeting rooms of various sizes, a Grand Banquet Room and a state-of-the-art Plenary that can be sub-divided into three self-contained theatres.
The Plenary, Grand Banquet Room, and small, medium and large meeting rooms in the convention centre all contain a NEXO sound reinforcement system. Australian distributor Group Technologies has supplied a total of 96x PS10 and PS8 compact high-output speakers, customised in white cabinets. These are wall-mounted throughout the smaller rooms, and monitored via centralised or satellite control rooms.
For the flagship facilities of the Melbourne Convention Centre, the design premise was to install the highest category of industry-standard pro-audio equipment to encourage visiting clients to utilise the in-house systems. The very flexibility of the room configurations set the biggest challenge. It was essential that the Plenary could be operated as a single 5,553 capacity theatre, as well as being sub-divisible into three entirely independent, acoustically-separate theatres, one with the capacity for 2,569 delegates and two for up to 1,507 delegates each.
A substantial NEXO GEO D line-array sound system using 40x GEO D10 modules was designed to deploy as eight separate hangs to allow for the sub-division of the Plenary. Exploiting NEXO’s patented 10° Hyperboloid Reflective Wavesource, the 3-way GEO D10 module achieves exceptional MF-LF output from a single 12° coupled to a proprietary Directivity Phase Device (DPD), and delivers consistent front-to-rear SPL across all coverage areas. NEXO’s digital NX242 TDcontrollers maximize MF/HF coherency while twin 8″ side-firing transducers create exceptional cardioid LF coverage.
Arraying from the same bumpers as the GEO D modules, 8x NEXO’s cardioid GEO SUBs provide directional sub-bass, 2x additional GEO SUBs are portable floor-mounted, while GEO S12, PS10and PS8 fill speakers address the balcony and under-balcony areas. The system can be adapted for different modes of operation by a simple preset recall within the audio processors. A flexible mixing console system can be patched from simple show mixing setups to full production setups, with separate front of house, recording and stage monitor consoles.
The Grand Banquet Room, another divisible space reaching full capacity with 1500 delegates, has been equipped with a GEO S8 line-array, NEXO’s efficient and compact arrayable enclosures which produce consistently excellent results in the reproduction of speech and music. The system has been designed with 16x GEO S805 and S830 modules arranged as four separate arrays, enabling several modes of presentation.