The Body Action Gym is a new six-star wellness facility Bedfordview area of Johannesburg offering world-class equipment, personalised nutritional guidance and claims a lifestyle environment ‘like no other’. Priority was given to the various entertainment systems that needed to fit into the gym’s overall vision for the facility, including a Martin Audio BlacklineX PA system.
‘We were trying to achieve an extremely high-quality, distributed, multi-zone, multi-purpose audio solution which would allow each area of the gym to have audio functioning either independently or collectively, at the touch of a button,’ says John Greaves of audio specialist Audiosure, who worked with Craig Harris and Mark Bracco from Audiobility, specialists in control automation, to help turn Body Action Gym’s vision into reality.
The Audiosure Solutions team had to be cognisant of the fact that the gym sits across three floors of a multistorey building shared with corporate offices, as the audio system needed to deliver club-level sound when guest DJs were playing yet leave the occupants of the offices above free from disturbance. ‘Structural transference was the gym’s biggest concern, so we needed to make sure that we isolated the speakers and subwoofers from any concrete surfaces,’ Greaves says.
This was achieved with the use of rubber mounts and steel suspension rope, and helped prevent any vibrations from being transferred through the concrete to the adjacent floors.
The main gym area uses 16 Blackline X8s mounted to custom column clamps, as well as six Blackline X118 subwoofers suspended from the concrete slab. The system is controlled by a Martin Audio DX0.5 speaker management system for EQ, crossover and system protection. Each of the studios is equipped with a pair of powered Blackline XP12s, providing 1.3kW of sound from an extremely compact enclosure. The XP12s are all pole mounted from the ceiling, using the rubber mounts.
The surrounding areas, including the indoor boxing area, outdoor CrossFit section, outdoor running track and basketball court and kids’ areas, were also equipped with sound, and careful selection of appropriate wireless microphones – from Belt-pack Transmitter Systems to Headset Microphones for the trainer.
Audiosure Director Greg Payne describes the project as an absolute pleasure: ‘From conceptualisation to completion, the outcome was exactly how we had planned it. Audiosure is privileged to distribute some of the world’s leading brands, and incorporating these into this project meant that the result was pure perfection.’
‘We are big fans of Blackline X because it offers exceptional sound quality at an affordable price, it offers very neat mounting hardware and an aesthetically pleasing enclosure design,’ Greaves adds. ‘The Blackline X powered enclosures are wonderful because of their built-in DSP, limiters and again the same points as above.
‘It was a compelling solution because the Blackline X8s are small and neat enough to be distributed all around the venue, while being impressive enough to cover the space effectively, with great sounding audio.’
