Greenfield, IN (January 29, 2014)—The city of Greenfield, IN, just outside of Indianapolis, celebrates its history each year with a weekend-long festival, Riley Days, in honor of poet James Whitcomb Riley. This festival, consisting of a variety of food and art vendors, is one of the many festivals held throughout the year.
To help support these festivals, the city upgraded its city-wide sound reinforcement system. Local A/V integration firm Force Technologies designed and installed the system for future expansion and convenient control using the Symetrix SymNet Radius 12×8 Dante networked audio signal processor and ARC-WEB user control for mobile devices.
Riley Days, named for poet James Whitcomb Riley, a Greenfield native, shuts down the main street for a weekend so vendors can set up tents.
“The city officials wanted a permanent sound reinforcement system that would serve Riley Days, as well as the other events that the city hosts,” explained A.J. Fager, owner of Force Technology Solutions. “The Symetrix SymNet Radius 12×8 was the perfect processor because it is powerful, cost-effective, and easily scalable via Dante. Moreover, we could give them customized control via SymVue real-time user control panel application running on any Windows compatible PC and simultaneously give them simple control for technicians’ smartphones via Symetrix’ ARC-WEB technology.”
The system is comprised of eight zones, each of which are independently tuned and delayed to minimize echo effects. Weatherproof Community R.5HP 8 Ohm and R.5HPt 70-Volt loudspeakers mounted to poles and powered by Crown CDi-Series amplifiers. “Those loudspeakers and amplifiers are capable of delivering high sound pressure, and the design became a case of ‘less is more,’” said Fager. “When we modeled the system, it was apparent that more loudspeakers would have complicated the delay scheme and ultimately resulted in more harm than good.” Inputs to the system include two music sources and two wireless microphone systems.
The Greenfield IT department manages the citywide sound reinforcement system. Fager designed a custom Windows-compatible, PC-based control interface using Symetrix SymVue software. The interface consists of a map of the city broken down by zone. Within each zone, technicians can control volume and other aspects of system performance. Because such adjustments are sometimes better made from the zone itself, Fager also gave them a Symetrix ARC-WEB interface. Technicians access the password protected ARC-WEB interface from their smartphones and can thus make adjustments from anywhere.
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