High-definition videowall installed at the St. Augustine/St. Johns County Visitor Information Center is complemented by high-definition audio provided by Bose® Panaray® loudspeakers
Bose® L1® Model II portable sound system is part of an AV upgrade package for the Center that allows it to confidently feature live music in an acoustically challenging environment
Framingham, Massachusetts, July 14, 2014 – For half a century, visitors to St. Augustine have made the St. Augustine/St. Johns County Visitor Information Center (VIC) their first stop upon arriving in what is officially the United States’ oldest continuously-inhabited city and European settlement. The center offers information on special and cultural events, brochures and guidebooks for the area’s attractions and a gift shop. But while the VIC’s architecture evokes the region’s Spanish past, its large main hall also presents acoustical challenges. Fortunately, the thousands of visitors who are introduced to the region’s attractions via a high-definition videowall installation hear every bit of information clearly, thanks to a Panaray® modular line array sound system from Bose® Professional Systems. The Panaray system, consisting of three MA12EX loudspeakers, was installed by RP|AV Audio Video Design & Installation of Bowersville, Georgia, and acts like a high-definition soundbar for the videowall consisting of eight 55-inch LCD displays, also installed by RP|AV. The project was part of a larger renovation of the VIC that also included a celebrated exhibition of 39 Picasso pieces from Málaga, Spain, the artist’s birthplace, put on as part of St. Augustine’s 450th anniversary commemoration.
“The visitor’s center was built as a community center, and its main hall is big and boomy – a difficult acoustical challenge,” explains Ron Prier, Owner of RP|AV Audio Video Design & Installation. “The videowall is located in this entrance area and the video was filed by a high-definition RED camera, so we had to find a sound system that could provide sound quality that matched the quality of what visitors experience visually, while at the same time being able to address the acoustic issues of that space. The answer was the Bose Panaray system.”
Prier says the MA12EX loudspeakers provide highly intelligible sound while at the same time sounding highly musical, to accommodate the DMX® scoring of the informational video. “The Panaray loudspeakers let us keep the audio very tightly focused and off of the floor and back walls where it would create reverberation and echo,” he says.
As part of the AV package, RP|AV Audio Video Design & Installation also provided the VIC a Bose L1® Model II portable sound system with a T1 ToneMatch® audio engine and a pair of B1 bass modules. This is used for live music performances in the lobby space, again assuring that the music and spoken words are all heard clearly and intelligibly. “The Bose systems really work well in challenging environments like this,” says Prier. “It’s performance you can count on.”
