With a nearly 17-year-old sound system and expanding audio needs, the City Council of Kaunas, in Lithuania, decided it was time to update its busy Grand Hall meeting space with a high-performance sound solution. As a regional hub of Lithuanian economic, academic and cultural life, the Grand Hall — within the city’s modernist Municipality Building — feature unique elements including a stained-glass ceiling and glass wall that presented acoustic challenges to audiences and Council members.

The Kaunas City Council called in A/V integration firm Audiotonas to design and install an appropriate system for the busy meeting space. Vytautas Stasiukaitis, Head of Sales for Audiotonas, explained that the Council needed a loudspeaker solution to provide better sound intelligibility and smoother SPL distribution for its members. Stasiukaitis demonstrated and specified two Renkus-Heinz DC12/2 beam steerable columns to ensure uniform audio coverage and intelligibility.

The audio system in the Grand Hall needed to be flexible enough to use as a public address system for Council meetings, guest presentations, and conferences, in addition to supporting the Council’s A/V-based voting system. It was also essential that the system could support streaming video when needed and background music during Council breaks. Audiotonas turned to Renkus-Heinz for a solution that would meet the needs of their meetings and additional activities.

‘Along with better intelligibility and increased sound levels, it was vital to maintain the hall’s aesthetics,’ Stasiukaitis says. ‘With just two Renkus-Heinz DC12/2 beam steerable columns, the entire hall is covered seamlessly, and match the aesthetic beautifully – you hardly even know they’re there.’

The hall measures nearly 300sq-m and features a multi-level stained-glass ceiling as well as the stained-glass wall at the front, behind the council seating. A three-tier, U-shaped set of conference tables occupy the centre of the space. When designing the sound system, it was critical that the new speakers  direct sound away from the ceiling and upper parts of the walls, and focus it instead toward the Council members, participants and audiences.

Renkus-Heinz beam steering technology allows the DC12/2 loudspeakers to tightly control the sound in the Grand Hall and place it where it’s needed — on the audience. Intelligibility is essential for the Grand Hall of Kaunas, and the Renkus-Heinz digitally steered loudspeaker system ensures that every listener receives the best sound possible by outputting a tight and asymmetrical beam of sound.

‘The City Council is very happy with the sound quality and coverage, and the intelligibility is excellent,’ Stasiukaitis reports. ‘This is why we use Renkus-Heinz; we can always trust that the results will be perfect in the end.’

More: www.renkus-heinz.com