Amadeus has announced its A470 Avignon Columns Series of line array loudspeakers comprising the Straight, Focus and Wide versions.
Initially designed specifically for the Avignon Festival and used within the Courtyard of the Palace of the Popes each summer, the Avignon Columns Series is now freely available for any venue.
The festival system is installed and used each summer and features ten A 470 Focus column modules, installed in a stereo configuration, offering two high-fidelity 4m line-source loudspeaker columns. The system is set almost 40m from the festival stage and is combined with the largest long-throw ‘soundbar’ ever built for the front of the stage at almost 30m long.
‘The spectral response – naturally extended to 45Hz without any additional equalisation – is quite remarkable, as it is in-phase and requires no additional reinforcement or complement for the vast majority of musical messages,’ says Michel Deluc, Director of R&D at Amadeus.
Each A 470 module is 800mm high, 280mm wide and houses 14 transducers. Each loudspeaker, 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° on average.
‘The A 470 column-type speaker is active and bi-amped,’ says Amadeus Acoustic Engineer, Numa Galipot. ‘It features planar ribbon transducers placed in front of the low/mid-range section, thus creating a coaxial type set-up. 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 1kHz offering a perfect optimisation of both power and finesse for the planar ribbon drivers across their entire frequency range, while also protecting them from low frequencies.’
The A 470 Straight features a straight enclosure; the A 470 Focus features a 1° enclosure angle and a 1° dispersion in the vertical plane. and the A 470 Wide features a 4° enclosure angle and a 4° dispersion in the vertical plane.
‘The off-axis response of the Avignon Columns above 60 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 3s on average,’ says Marc Piera, who oversaw the electro-acoustic calibration of the 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 a totally uncontrolled acoustic.’
All three Avignon Columns models are available for order, with delivery in Q2 2024.
More: http://amadeuslab.com
