Florida Power & Light Relies On Tannoy QFlex To Spread The Word

Florida Power & Light (FPL) headquarters in Juno Beach, Florida, features a large atrium that is often used for annual meetings, announcements and gatherings for employees.

An expansive room – approximately 175 feet long by 70 feet wide and 50 feet tall – it features glass walls, a metal roof and tile floor. A second floor balcony overlooks the area and is often used as an additional viewing area for such events.

In the past the company has relied upon speaker-on-a-stick sound reinforcement during atrium gatherings. Although sufficient for small events, these systems were mostly unintelligible for large assemblies.

The FPL leadership recently decided it was time to address the unintelligibility issue and contacted Peerson Audio in nearby Jupiter, Florida for a solution.

“They wanted a system that would cover the first floor and balcony intelligibly,” explains Allen Peerson, owner of Peerson Audio. “We needed a system that would allow us to direct the sound on the audience and keep it off of the hard surfaces – which were pretty much everywhere.”

Looking for a single point source solution, Peerson turned to QFlex array loudspeakers from Tannoy. He brought in a QFlex 32 for demonstration purposes and won approval immediately.

“They were extremely impressed with the system,” he adds. “I was told that it was the first time they had been able to hear anything crystal clear in the room – ever.”

After further review, Peerson decided that the Qflex 48 would better suit their need with additional SPL and the option of covering an even larger audience area. He used VNET, Tannoy’s proprietary Qflex software to program the column array specifically to the rooms needs.

Peerson opted to hang the QFlex 48 from a metal ceiling joist in the ceiling with the cable and brackets provided. It was “steered” using two hanging points to direct the sound where it was needed.

The QFlex 48 is a little more than 9.5 feet tall with than a 7-inch width and depth loaded with sixteen 4-inch low frequency drivers, sixteen 3-inch low frequency drivers and sixteen 1-inch high frequency drivers.

Peerson Audio also provided a Symetrix DSP mixer with the system so that the end-user could control the system source materials and volume controls via a smart phone.

“It was important to provide them with a system that would not only provide intelligibility but also suit their needs for a long time,” Peerson explains. “This was another situation where QFlex was ideal for the application.”

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