HERNING, Denmark — The 2012 edition of the Giro d’Italia bicycle stage race started off not in Italy, but in the middle of Denmark. But if that posed a logistical challenge for event organizers, another Italian export served as a solution, as far as the audio system to announce the winners of each of three stages was concerned. K-array and its Danish distributor MAVT provided a system centering on K-array’s RedLine 402.
More details from K-array (www.k-array.com):
“The Italian culture hits the Danish roads.” This is the motto that the 2012 Giro d’Italia in Denmark brought along. One may wonder what Giro d’Italia has to do with Danish roads. Maybe only keen cycling lovers know that this year’s event took off from Denmark. A three-stage part of the competition that expanded the traditional borders of the event, passing through the central-eastern region of the country over the three days (5th, 6th, and 7th May). Thus, Herning and Horsens, the two towns of arrival, were entirely colored pink, the Giro d’Italia official color to fully honor the public and the athletes.
Jan Jull Hansen, is the owner of MAVT the Danish company distributing K-array products in the area since 2011 and a key figure in many projects implemented using the Italian brand. Jan was called by the Giro d’Italia organizers to solve some major issues related to some supporting events logistics the first of which was orchestrating the awards ceremonies, which needed to be held only one day apart and in towns far from each other, and needed to be accessible to a large but unspecified public. “K-array perfectly met both needs” – said Jan – “actually we never knew the exact number of people present at the venue and we couldn’t take the risk of leaving some areas unreached by the sound… I dare not imagine how disappointed one would be to witness an awards ceremony without being able to clearly hear the name of the winner! In addition we were on a tight schedule and thus being extremely compact and easy to mount, the system we chose (RedLine 402) allowed us to complete demounting and reassembly operations in just one night. Besides the sound aspect, we were also requested to provide an approximately 20m2 giant LEDwall, conceived to facilitate viewing the ceremony. Thus, the extreme K-array mounting and set-up speed allowed us to meet tight deadlines even regarding the rest of the job.”
As regards the sound distribution during the Giro awards ceremonies, the two RedLine KR402 “heads”, in turn made up of two line-array modules medium-low frequencies, were hanged on the front truss, while the subwoofers were simply placed on the stage. Each of the latter house a 21’’ cone, driven by a class-D amplifier, in turn processed by a powerful DSP which facilitates all system equalization and alignment operations. In addition, presets already defined by the parent company, obviously implementable with those created by the user (and which can be stored in a memory up to a maximum of 40) are available. “A plug&play system which solved all our problems and worked right away hence making the rest of the work much easier,” said Jan.
For more information on MAVT, go to www.mavt.dk.
