The impressive interior and renaissance features of the National Bank of Greece are appealing to the eye but give rise to sound that offends the ear. Constructed in 1890, the building provides the National Bank of Greece with a cultural venue for exhibitions, events, presentations and meetings. To service this multi-purpose usage, the Bank needs audio of the highest quality and vocal intelligibility, and commissioned Athens-based Automation Broadcasting Audio Security (ABAS) to design and install a suitable system.

‘The beautiful interior is highly reverberant due to all its surfaces being very reflective, combined with the height of the room which reaches 16m,’ says Kostas Drosos of ABAS. ‘We needed a loudspeaker that delivers the audio quality required within a narrow vertical and wide horizontal dispersion pattern. To meet these parameters, we chose Community Entasys ENT220 column loudspeakers. With 20 80mm-long excursion mylar LF drivers and four three-element HF Compact Ribbon Emulators per enclosure, they gave precisely the directivity control we needed.

‘Complete and even coverage of the room was achieved with just four ENT220s,’ he continues. ‘Their slim profile also meant they were very discreet and aesthetically pleasing.’ Each loudspeaker is driven by a separate amplifier to provide different sound levels required for the front and the mid/back spaces.

‘We chose Monacor amplifiers from Germany, as they have powerful processing built in for loudspeaker equalisation. With Crestron control, the system can be operated wirelessly from an iPad.’ As part of the project, ABAS also installed a high-quality 6,500 lumen Panasonic projector system.

‘The new audio system provides superb intelligibility and coverage,’ Drosos says. ‘It sounds very natural and listeners do not hear any change in volume throughout the room, allowing them to completely relax and focus on the event they are attending.’