An Exclusive Boxing Night staged recently at the Sporthal in Kuringen, Belgium saw event production supplier Visible Noise deploy a CODA Audio APS loudspeakers to deliver 360-degree sound reinforcement to more than a thousand in attendance.
“This was only the second edition of Exclusive Boxing Night and the promoters wanted to improve the audio, recognizing that it plays a very important part in helping to energize the events on the night,” says Visible Noise owner Wim Wuytens. “When each boxer is announced, a DJ plays an entrance song, some statistics and history are presented and then, when the fight takes place, there is more music between the rounds. The system needed to be flexible enough to deliver intelligible spoken word and loud music.”
APS modules offer a compact dual-10-inch design utilizing proprietary DDP driver technology. The concept is an arrayable system that combines the attributes of both point source and line array approaches.
For Exclusive Boxing Night, four APS arrays — each comprised of an APS-SUB and two APS mains beneath — were flown above the boxing ring on a grid with a central crosspiece. The 90-degree dispersion of the mains proved to deliver optimal coverage from the edge of the ring to the furthest parts of the arena. Two CODA LINUS10C amplifiers driving the loudspeakers were also flown and controlled via LINUS Control.
“As an owner of the APS system I was completely confident about its sound quality and that it had more than enough output for the arena,” Wuytens notes. Placing the rig around the ring was not an option — we wouldn’t have achieved the coverage and would have interrupted the sightlines. Also, the VIP tables close to the ring sold out really quickly, so it was clear the subs had to be flown as well. We redrew the grid above the ring, where we were able to cluster four hangs, each consisting of two tops and a sub above them. Flying the subs above the tops made the system time-aligned and added some extra coupling to the system itself. I even had to decrease the sub output a little because they combined to give a really noticeable boost in the low end.”
Wuytens was the first owner of an APS system in Belgium, adding it to the inventory following a demonstration by CODA distributor Hans Engelen of Viladco. He was seeking a system with scalability for small- to medium-sized events, and as demand has grown over time, has added APS components to his inventory to bring larger events into reach.
“This was the easiest way to set up the system for the event and it couldn’t have been better,” he concludes. “In my opinion, the CODA Audio APS system covers everything from speech, through acoustic music to punchy live performance and it was perfect for every aspect of this particular event. Every corner of the arena experienced the crisp, clear, in-your-face CODA sound that I’ve come to expect and there was plenty of bottom end when the DJ ramped it up. The client was convinced from the outset that he’d made the right choice. They were first impressed by how neat the system looked — when they heard it in use they were completely astonished by the quality of the sound.”
