The city hall of Happy Valley, Oregon, one of the fastest growing municipalities in the state, is served by flexible, highly functional audio and video systems that help bring clarity and efficiency to the process of government.
The 25,000-square-foot facility includes a large city council chamber and several smaller meeting rooms, as well as a variety of civic offices and public spaces. Located in downtown Happy Valley (just outside of Portland), the city hall is designed to accommodate the city’s growth for at least the next 20 years.
All AV systems for the new city hall were designed by Listen Acoustics of Portland, a leading provider of acoustical consulting and design of professional audio and video systems that’s headed by Tobin Cooley, P.E. Listen Acoustics specializes in complex presentation and entertainment projects, and has provided AV systems design at well over a dozen government and municipal facilities.
Cascade Sound & Stage Lighting of nearby Salem, Oregon, provided turnkey system installation and custom engineering services for the Happy Valley project.
“This building and its capabilities define the term state of the art,” notes Jeff Carroll, vice president of engineering at Cascade Sound & Stage Lighting. “You walk into the building and your first thoughts are that it’s really, really functional, on top of being very interesting.”
The Council Chambers
The largest space is the city council chambers, a rectangular room with a capacity for approximately 200, set up in a standard configuration with large dais/platform at the front. The semi-circular dais accommodates council members and other officials during meetings, while a podium for public comments is placed front/center of the audience seating area.
The most distinguishing yet challenging feature of the room, however, is a ceiling made of tongue-in-groove wood materials that slopes both to the left and downward toward the rear. The unique shaping and design presented an acoustical challenge for the system designers. The design originally included some acoustic treatment of the room which was eventually eliminated at the request of the client.
As a result, the room required a loudspeaker system that could precisely control the sound coverage in the room. This requirement proved to be one of the primary factors in the selection of Tannoy V15 point-source, constant-directivity loudspeakers to deliver highly intelligible, tightly focused sound reinforcement coverage to the entire space.
With the aid of EASE, a sound system simulation and design tool, Listen Acoustics determined optimal locations for all loudspeakers, based both upon its experience as well as assist from EASE.
What resulted is a “quasi-distributed” strategy, one utilizing a few more loudspeakers than normal in order to shorten loudspeaker throw distances, thereby helping to limit excess acoustic reflections and maximize speech intelligibility.
This approach also proved to be the right solution in terms of striking the right balance between visual aesthetics and everyone being able to hear clearly,” explains Cooley. “The architectural design of the ceiling is a highlight of the room, while at the same time, coverage is focused on the audience.”
Some Tannoy Di5a compact loudspeakers were distributed along the council table to provide a bit of added vocal presence for the council members.
Following this design parameter, six V15 loudspeakers are flown via load-rated steel cabling hung from the tongue-and-groove wood ceiling at approximately nine feet above the floor.
Each V15 loudspeaker has a 15-inch Tannoy PowerDual drive unit. The increased efficiency and power handling of this driver design ensures that the V15 is capable of delivering high SPLs in even the most demanding situations.
Like all Tannoy Dual Concentric loudspeakers, the V15 exhibits true constant directivity, providing an even frequency response over the entire area of coverage, making it particularly well-suited for high-quality public address situations.
“The dual-drive design makes the V15 a tight, cohesive loudspeaker system, and for this type of an application - spoken word in a government-civic environment - the ability to deliver solid, intelligible vocal reinforcement that’s very evenly distributed is an absolute key,” states Carroll. “Just six of these loudspeakers are all that’s required to blanket the entire room, front to back and side to side.”
Five V15’s cover the audience area, with three at the front of the area supported by two more toward the rear, while the remaining unit handles the dais region.
Meeting Rooms Add To The Mix
Several meeting rooms in the facility, meanwhile, can receive audio feeds from the council chambers, with all of those rooms served by Tannoy CMS601 DC full-bandwidth, high-power ceiling monitor systems.
The CMS601 DC design uses Tannoy’s Dual Concentric transducer, with a 6.5-inch drive unit mounted in a vented, injection-molded, front baffle with spring-loaded self-aligning clamps for easy installation.
All loudspeakers are driven by Crown CTs two-channel power amplifiers, with a BSS Soundweb SW9088 8 input by 8 output audio processor providing comprehensive digital audio processing and routing.
All dais positions are outfitted with Audio-Technica U-Series gooseneck microphones, each with a push to mute button to allow private conversations among council members.
Further, Listen Acoustics and Cascade Sound & Stage Lighting teamed up on an advanced high-definition (HD) video system.
A variety of source devices, including Denon DN-V210 DVD player, Toshiba DVD/VHS combo player, and a Wolfvision VZ-9Plus document camera plus data/USB inputs feed (distribution over CAT-5) two FSR E-200 (Eagle) switchers.
One E-200 delivers program feeds to two Sanyo PLC-XP100L 6500-lumen projectors in the council chambers, as well as seven ToteVision LCD-1048HDR 10.4-inch LCD displays located at each council person’s dais position.
This switcher can also be activated to feed Mitsubishi LDT46TV 46-inch LCD monitors in two other meeting rooms.
The other FSR switcher is for future use, for broadcast of council meetings and other events to the public. Furthering this capability are two Sony BRC-H700 HD pan-tilt-zoon cameras already mounted in the chambers, with more planned to be installed in the future.
An AMX NI-3000 integrated controller resides at the head of video and audio systems, interfacing with an AMX MVP-8400 8.4-inch wireless touch panel that provides operators with simple options for configuration, depending upon need and application.
“Prior to this new building, the town council was meeting in a trailer, using a hand recorder as their only AV system,” Cooley concludes. “So they’ve gone from extremely basic to very sophisticated in a short period of time. System training was key, and that’s where the easy control and easy use of the system was extremely important.”
Julie M. Clark has been involved with audio and video in one way or another for over 15 years, including marketing, public relations and sales.
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