A Grade II-listed landmark dating from 1880s Nottingham, Number 50 Shakespeare Street is the former home of the Nottingham City Council Registry Office, but now the property of Nottingham Trent University housing administrative offices, a boardroom, meeting rooms, and a multi-use Courtroom for public meetings, mock trials and other events. Purchased in 2012, the University has now completed a major renovation and restoration of the gothic-style building.

UK company Polar Audio has worked with the university on several previous projects, and was called upon to address a number of issues in the building, including conferencing and sound reinforcement solutions for the Courtroom. Installed by Roche AV, the sound system is based around Renkus-Heinz Iconyx steered arrays.

The Courtroom’s domed ceiling and architecture make a stunning impact, but present challenges to spoken word intelligibility, which can be inconsistent across the seating areas. Poor coverage and intelligibility impacted not only meetings and conferencing, but hampered the effectiveness of other events, including presentations, speeches, and even background music. To meet the requirements of a multi-use facility with these challenging acoustics, Polar Audio installed a pair of Iconyx IC8-R-II columns facing the audience seating – allowing the sound to be focused directly on the audience and directed away from walls and other reflective surfaces.

The building’s historical status demanded that the sound system could in no way compromise the visual integrity of the room. With Renkus-Heinz providing a precise colour matching, the Iconyx speaker columns were installed adjacent to architectural columns, enabling them to blend in almost imperceptively.

Polar Audio reports that the university administration have been pleased with the new system, as  Martin Clay, Technical Director at Roche, reports: ‘As with all projects we’ve done with PolarAudio, this project was characterised by a great solution and satisfied customers.’