Meyer Sound’s new ULTRA-X40 speaker signs its largest permanent installation at the Austria Center Vienna so far
Located adjacent to the United Nations headquarters complex in Austria’s capital city, Austria Center Vienna (ACV) is an expansive conference and exhibition facility offering 24 presentation halls for 100 to 4.320 participants along with 180 smaller meeting rooms and 22.000 square meters of exhibition space. Over the past year, Austria Center Vienna overhauled the audio systems in eight of the largest halls, replacing aging conventional loudspeaker systems with new Meyer Sound self-powered systems based on LINA line array and the new ULTRA-X40 point source loudspeakers supplied by ATEC Pro Audio.
The premier showcase systems are in ACV’s three largest halls, A, B and C, which have moveable walls which close to partition halls as separate spaces or open to join two or three together for maximum seating of over 4.300. The largest, hall A, deploys left and right arrays of 13 each LINA loudspeakers with a center array of six LINA loudspeakers. To ensure clear line of sight for video projectors, the six 750-LFC low frequency control elements are flown as dual cardioid arrays in a horizontal configuration using custom mounting frames. Six additional 750-LFC elements are available for ground stacking if needed. Four ULTRA-X40 loudspeakers serve as in fill and flown stage monitors, with eight UPM-1P compact loudspeakers available for stage front fill.
The systems for halls B and C are identical, each with dual arrays of six each LINA loudspeakers at left and right. The single ULTRA-X40 center loudspeaker is suspended on a custom mount. For quick, seamless and reliable room combining, there are four AVB-networked Galileo GALAXY 816 processors in hall A and one each in B and C.
Austria Center Vienna claims the first and largest permanent installation to date of the new ULTRA-X40 point source loudspeakers, which had not yet been released until most of the planning was complete. ULTRA-X40 loudspeakers are the foundation of systems in four of the mid-size halls (E, F, G and K), with four of the loudspeakers as mains in each.
“We did have significant weight restrictions on a truss for the main stage, which allowed only 500 kilograms at three points for audio and lighting”, said ATEC Pro managing director Manfred Prochazka. “But this was not a problem with LINA. The slender and unobtrusive profile of the LINA arrays was another big plus.”
As for the ULTRA-X40 speakers, Ronald Wittenberg, ACV deputy head of event management and supervisor of staff technicians, notes: “I first heard ULTRA-X40 at ISE in Amsterdam and I was immediately impressed. I asked if it would be possible to replace some other planned speakers with ULTRA-X40 and fortunately the production models became available in time to do so.”
Manfred Prochazka concludes: “By placing the three larger rooms on an AVB network we were able to offer a very cost-efficient and fail-safe solution. If one connection fails, the other takes over immediately and automatically. Also, we put the RMS Servers on the same network infrastructure for comprehensive monitoring and control of each individual loudspeaker.”
