Wisconsin’s Green Lake Conference Center accommodates up to 1,000 visitors, providing 900 acres to explore, 50 meeting spaces, a range of lodging and dining options, and outdoor activities from boating to ziplining. Now, thanks to integration firm Audio Contractors, it boasts two rooms with Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers and subwoofers.
‘The Green Lake Conference Center reached out to us because they had two important rooms with major shortcomings in their audio systems,’ explains Audio Contractors Commercial Systems Designer, Andrew Szlapka.
‘First, the existing in-ceiling system in their large dining room produced unintelligible sound being mounted in the ceiling, 30ft up. Because the conference centre was understandably concerned that we maintain a nice visual aesthetic in the dining room, I thought of Danley Nanos, which are an unobtrusive six-inches cubed. We could mount them discretely from brown beams that crisscrossed the room at only 15ft.’
Szlapka worked with acoustician Doug Jones (an eight-year member of the Danley team) and with Danley Direct, a modeling program that Jones helped develop, to make not only accurate mid- and high-frequency predictions, but also accurate low-frequency predictions that other modeling software cannot.
‘Working with Doug Jones was like a dream come true,’ Szlapka says. It’s the kind of top-tier help you want from a manufacturer, and Danley is one of the few companies that consistently delivers it. Doug took his time to really teach me how to use Danley Direct. I brought the model predictions to my sales presentation, which was a huge selling point. They cut a check that very day.’
The Green Lake Conference Center dining room uses 15 Danley Nanos distributed around the room with low end conveyed by two Danley THmini subwoofers mounted eighteen feet apart on a ledge.
‘The Nanos sound great,’ Szlapka says. ‘It’s hi-fi in a distributed system, and the THminis really fill out the bass. They can use that system for teen dances; that’s how much output it has. And with the dining room stage set behind the distributed system, gain-before-feedback is huge.’
QSC CMX-Series amplifiers power the Nanos and a QSC PLX-Series amplifier powers the THminis. Ashly DSP and user interface completes the dining room system.
‘The second issue was Staughton Hall, which is only ten-and-a-half-feet high,’ Szlapka says. ‘The big challenge was the deep length combined with the low ceiling height. The old system was distributed overhead, but when there was a band on stage, everything localised to the ceiling. It was pretty bad. Don Ludwig (the upper-Midwest rep for Danley) had told me about Danley’s SBH-series of column-form point-source loudspeakers. I modeled the room in Danley Direct like Doug Jones had taught me. It showed that a pair of Danley SBH20LFs would cover 75 per cent of the room and deliver the bass as well with built-in subwoofers.’
The Audio Contractors team worked with the architect to recess the Danley SBH20LFs into the wall on either side of the stage. To cover the back corners that the column speakers couldn’t reach, Szlapka installed two Danley SHMicro loudspeakers. Powersoft Duecanali amplifiers power the system with an Ashly DSP and user interface.
‘Staughton Hall is ready for conference presentations, but it’s also ready for live bands,’ Szlapka says. ‘We gave them all the inputs and connectivity to make that easy. Moreover, Danley’s phase-coherent output and well-defined pattern control minimises feedback problems.’
More: www.danleysoundlabs.com
