The new Fenghua Sports Center in Ningbo City’s Fenghua District comprises a 7,000-seat stadium, a 700-seat swimming complex with indoor tennis hall, outdoor training facilities, activity venues and various ancillary facilities. A a city landmark, the centre hosts events including extreme sports, competitive sports, leisure and fitness, and celebrations.
The facility’s design drwaws on Fenghua marine culture and the aesthetics of boat paddles as its inspiration, with EZPro was handed the task of supplying and installing an ‘always-on’ audio system with a straightforward, user-friendly interface.
Reliability, ease-of-use, and audio quality were key considerations in EZPro’s decision-making, with an Allen & Heath Avantis console selected for mixing duties, partnered with a DX168 portable stagebox expander, offering 16 inputs and eight outputs, and the larger GX4816 expander, featuring 48 inputs and 16 outputs plus additional DX connectivity, to provide distributed analogue I/O to the system.
In the swimming complex, the main audio system has been structured around an A&H SQ-7, paired with an AR2412 expander which provides an additional 24x12 analogue I/O to the system. Allen & Heath’s SQ mixer series delivers 48 channels of 96kHz audio with <0.7ms latency. The largest mixer in the range, SQ-7 provides 32 onboard preamps, 16 line outputs, and 33 faders over six layers.
Both Avantis and SQ mixers are compatible with Allen & Heath’s Deep processing add-ons which, in addition to the in-built options, provide effective processing tools to meet the varied demands of live and installed sound applications. Additionally, both are compatible with the Everything I/O ecosystem of audio expanders and several audio networking cards including Dante, Madi and Waves.
‘The Allen & Heath system ticks all the boxes; powerful processing tools, super-fast set-up, and unrivalled ease of use,’ says EZPro Technical Engineer, Wu Ziqiang. ‘The variety of built-in processing tools greatly helped FOH engineers to deliver a studio-quality mix in the large venue.’
