School of Christ The King

Lighting & Audio Upgrade

Enlightened were approached by School of Christ the King, Bristol, to offer a proposal for the supply and installation of new sound and lighting equipment. The brief was to modernise the systems, improve functionality and creative capacity for school productions, whilst ensuring the systems are reliable and easy to use for all staff within the school.

At the time of the initial enquiry, the school’s main hall had no provision for theatrical lighting of any kind and the existing audio equipment only offered limited functionality, such as simple playback of CD or DVD formats,

The school required a simple, flexible solution for the main hall that could be used by teaching staff for daily assemblies and seasonal school plays. The replacement audio system’s primary purpose was to provide ease and consistency of use to all staff, high-quality speech reinforcement and even audio coverage, whilst also supporting a radio microphone package and music playback from a wider variety of sources, such as Bluetooth and laptop devices.

In addition to the new audio system, Matt Condon (Headmaster) requested Enlightened supply and install a simple to use lighting system that would enable the staff to create effective lighting states for special events and seasonal school productions.

Throughout the project, Enlightened has worked closely with the school staff to develop a brief and interrogate all proposals closely in order to ensure that the technical solution met all of the school’s requirements. Furthermore, it was of utmost importance that Enlightened delivered the project with a specification that was capable of future expansion and offering high-quality equipment, whilst being as cost-effective as possible.

The final technical solution fulfilled all of the school’s requirements within a single lectern housing, providing simple & user-friendly control of audio and lighting equipment via custom touch panel interfaces that offered simple recall of audio settings and lighting states, which met everyday requirements such as assemblies, via the touch of a button.

To provide speech reinforcement we specified Sennheisers G4 series wireless system with two handheld mics with receivers and two lavalier mics with receivers. The G4 series is specifically designed to provide professional quality sound for presenters, singers and musicians combined with hassle-free set-up and use. Loudspeakers and amplification requirements were fulfilled by a Martin Audio VIA2004 4 channel amplifier, a pair of Martin Blackline X10 speakers and two Martin Audio 10” SSX subwoofers. A Yamaha MTX3 audio processor sat at the heart of the audio installation and fulfilled all processing requirements, supplemented by control via a custom iPad interface which was designed to provide simple use to school staff. Audio playback is delivered by a Denon 500CB media player which affords great flexibility supporting formats such as CD, laptop input, USB and Bluetooth inputs.

Similarly, the new lighting system consisting of a single lighting bar now provides a facility to wash the stage in bold colours, easily accessed via an ETC Echo Touch Screen Controller also mounted in the control lectern. The new LED lighting has the advantage of not only requiring minimum maintenance with greater longevity but also requires no external dimming and uses considerably less power than traditional tungsten fixtures.

The new system gives complete flexibility of use. Its convenient, user-friendly control via the custom made lectern is the perfect solution for the school, affording them simple, intuitive everyday control at the point of use.

Specification

Audio

1 x Yamaha MTX 3 System Controller
2 x Martin Blackline X10 speakers
2 x Martin Audio 10” SSX subwoofers
1 x Martin VIA2004 amplifier
1 x Denon 500CB media player
1x Yamaha MCP1 Touch Screen control panel
2 x Sennheiser 100 Wireless Handheld Microphone Set EW100 G4-835-S-GB 507536
2 x Sennheiser 100 Wireless Lavalier Microphone Set EW100 G4-ME4-GB 507511
1 x Apple iPad, 9.7 inch, Wi-Fi, 32GB (Wireless Audio control via MTX3)