PHILADELPHIA — K-array distributors Third Street Services and Sennheiser USA supported a recent upgrade to the audio system within the acoustically challenging interior of the Rodin Museum here by installing K-array KV50s, KU36s and KT20CWs, all powered by four KA7-7s.
More details from Sennheiser (www.sennheiserusa.com):
It’s quite normal for Paris to love Rodin, the French artist who represented turbulence between the nineteenth and twentieth century. This explains why his home in Paris is a museum containing most of his works. However, Rodin boasted of another great admirer, from overseas this time round – one of the movie industry’s pioneer tycoons and businessmen, Jules Mastbaum. Within the span of just three years, Mastbaum managed to gather a large number of Rodin’s works, about 140 including bronze, marble and plaster, besides drawings, letters, prints etc. A collection that is second to the one still in France alone. The next step, in the patronage and liberal spirit that distinguished Mastbaum, was creating a museum to house them. Mastbaum hired the architect Paul Cret and the landscape designer Jacque Gréber for the job. The two gave life to a structure worth the importance of the task, characterized by neoclassic lines and completed by an “à la Française” garden conceived to bring out the Rodin sculptures to the uttermost.
Opened in 1929 in Philadelphia, the city chosen by Mastbaum, the museum was successful enough to gather 390,000 visitors over the first year of opening alone. The Rodin Museum reopened last September after major restoration works that involved both the facility and the garden. These works included providing a sound distribution system, conceived for background music as well as for announcements and public address.
Obviously, considering the context, installation was required to be as discrete as possible as not to divert the visitors’ attention from the works. In addition, from a technical point of view, high sound quality was required also for different uses as well as the possibility of reducing reverberation produced by environments characterized by smooth walls and marble finishing as much as possible.
Thanks to a clarifying demo, by Christopher Spahr and Tom Conte of Sennheiser USA, specific product know-how of Third Street Services (the local distributor) combined with their discretion, design and sound directivity, K-array products conquered a place in this culture and art temple. In particular, four KV50s were installed on the walls of the main gallery, at about 2 meters of height, completed with the presence of two KU36s positioned on the ground, chosen for their compactness and portability.
Actually, the system would have been used for distributing different contents, which do not always require reinforcing the bass sounds. This is the reason why the museum reserved the possibility to temporarily eliminate the “other” elements of the works, thus physically removing the subwoofers when not required. The same was implemented in the Library, an environment with an almost 10 m high vaulted ceiling. In addition, two other KU36s, to be removed if not required, were installed alongside the eight KT20CWs recessed in the very vault structure. Four KA7-7s amplify the entire system.
Third Street Service’s Ted Sheppard explained that the KV50s (thin arrays featuring eight 1’’ neodymium transducers) were selected due to their transparent sound and extreme compactness, characteristics they also share with the KT20CWs. The latter instead are recessed miniaturized pass speakers, conceived for distributed sound systems. Albeit being small in size, they are capable of distributing both spoken and music contents at an SPL value amounting up to 107 dBs, for a frequency range between 150 Hz and 18 KHz.
The system was conceived by Third Street Services, in conjunction with Jim Fraatz and Steve Keever of the Philadelphia Art Museum and installed within three months by the very Third Street Services.
The installation worked perfectly right from the start and it only required the optimization of a new personalized preset, loaded on the KA7-7s, instantly executed thanks to the promptness of the installation technicians and setting versatility provided for by K-array. The new preset solely modified the relevant impact of the two KU36s, which revealed to be more than perfectly efficient even alone.
For more information, please visit www.rodinmuseum.org and www.3rd-st.com.
