ISE 2024: Amadeus adds Avignon Columns
- Details
Initially specifically designed for the Avignon Festival – and used within the Courtyard of the Palace of the Popes each summer – the Avignon Columns Series line array from Amadeus is now available for every venue.
For two years, experts and specialists in culture-oriented facilities, craftsmen, and industrials of different trades and domains have worked together to create and install this new system for the festival. The system which is installed and used each summer at the Avignon Palace of the Popes features 10 A 470 Focus column modules, installed in a stereophonic configuration, offering two high-fidelity, line-source speaker columns, of 4m long each.
The stereophonic system suspended in the courtyard – spaced almost 40m from the Avignon Festival stage – is combined with the largest long-throw ‘soundbar’ ever built for the front of the stage – almost 30m long.
“This system offers a masterly combination of smoothness, response, precision, and reach,” says Michel Deluc, director of the research and development department at Amadeus.
“The spectral response – naturally extended to 45Hz without any additional equalization – is quite remarkable, as it is in-phase and requires no additional reinforcement or complement for the vast majority of musical messages.”
Each A 470 module is 80cm high, 28cm wide and houses 14 transducers. Each loudspeaker, therefore, incorporates four internal sections, offering exceptionally precise coverage, including four 6.5-inch long-excursion loudspeakers – co-developed with the Danish brand PURIFI – as well as four planar ribbons and six 8-inch diameter long-excursion passive radiators. The nominal directivity of a loudspeaker in the horizontal plane is 100 degrees on average.
“The new A 470 column-type speaker is active and bi-amped. It features planar ribbon transducers placed in front of the low/mid-range section, thus creating a 'coaxial' type setup. The proprietary waveguide for the bass/mid-range transducers also works as a closed-back load for the planar ribbons. Each section features a linear-phase FIR crossover filter with a very steep Brickwall-type slope at 1000 Hz offering a perfect optimization of both power and finesse for the planar ribbon drivers across their entire frequency range, while also protecting them from low frequencies,” says Numa Galipot, acoustic engineer at Amadeus.
The A 470 ‘Straight’ column module, features a straight enclosure design. The A 470 Focus column module, features a 1-degree enclosure angle and a 1-degree dispersion in the vertical plane. The A 470 Wide column module, features a 4-degree enclosure angle and a 4-degree dispersion in the vertical plane.
"The off-axis response of the Avignon Columns above 600 Hz, measured on-site at the Avignon Courtyard of the Palace of the Popes, is within +/- 1.5dB, which is quite exceptional given the acoustic characteristics of the venue, the specular reflections on the walls, and the reverberation time of more than 3 seconds on average,” says Marc Piera, who was in charge of the electro-acoustic calibration of the sound system at the Avignon Festival.
“Moreover, the length of each line array – around 4m corresponding to a wavelength of 85Hz – favours a directivity effect and the natural range of the bass. The feeling of precision in the lower end of the spectrum is therefore noticeable and appreciable, even at 30m and in totally uncontrolled acoustics.”
