KATOWICE, Poland — Although its temporary appearance there didn’t cause a tabloid frenzy, Danley Sound Labs confirmed that some of its gear — including the company’s new Genesis Horns, SH Series loudspeakers and TH Series subwoofers — was used at the 11,500-seat Spokek arena. The Spodek is among the better-known arenas in Europe. Its name translates as “saucer,” and the arena, which opened in 1971, is UFO-shaped. Rumors of structural imperfections were unfounded, although the sound system left something to be desired — namely, the absence of acoustic diffusers, which were removed due to fears of asbestos.
As a result, the venue not only lacked a sound system, it also offered very unpromising acoustics for a temporary system installed just before the venue hosted EuroBasket 2009, a pan-European basketball championships.
Sound engineer and A/V systems designer Piotr Pronko with Natural Sound Service rose to the challenge using the Danley Genesis Horns, loudspeakers and subwoofers.
“The acoustics in Spodek were wonderful before the renovation,” said Pronko. “Now the reverb time is up to 3.5 seconds. But the old stuff was dangerous. What can you do?”
To answer his rhetorical question, you could design and install a new diffusion system, which is exactly what Pronko is currently doing. But that won’t be ready for several months. In the meantime, Spodek needed sound for the big basketball event.
Pronko’s temporary system centered on four Danley Genesis Horns, which Danley calls its answer to the line array. Like the line array, the gear promises ease of rigging and sight lines, but is said to sidestep a key limitation — deep comb filtering in the vertical plane. The system benefits from three Danley patented technologies — Synergy Horn, Paraline, and Shaded Amplitude Lens.
Pronko supplemented the Genesis Horns with four Danley SH-50s and two SH-95s to cover all of the seating with even reinforcement. Ten subwoofers, meanwhile — including Danley TH-115s, TH-215s, TH-50s and TH-212s — pushed a thumping low-end throughout the saucer.
Electro-Voice CP3000 amps powered the Genesis Horns, while the remainder of the boxes were self-powered. A Dolby Lake Processor, with remote control from a wireless tablet PC, provided all of the processing for the system.
“Others would have come at this job with a minimum of two line arrays with twelve components each and 20 subwoofers,” said Pronko. “We did it with less than half that.”
The system generated some positive feedback from the head of TRIAS Media, the company responsible for all of the television feeds, who came to Pronko and said he had never heard live audio that sounded so clear and natural.
“I have worked in the audio industry for 40 years,” said Pronko. “And I have spent 40 years fighting with audio. For me, Danley is a dream come true. I no longer fight to get the sound I hear in my mind — it comes out of the speakers! Tom Danley is a genius. During EuroBasket, all of my friends and colleagues came by to hear the system. During down time, I would take them into upper seats — 150 meters (approximately 500 feet) from the center of the arena — and change the volume of the Genesis Horns. They were so far away — tiny little things — and yet the sound was huge, loud and present. Everyone was left speechless. It’s something that has to be experienced.”
For more information, please visit www.danleysoundlabs.com.
