AiRAY Pumps it Out for AMBION at World Fitness Day
“We were limited by weight restrictions on how large the systems could be but at the same time faced demands to cover an area 75m deep without delays. AiRAY and ViRAY were unbeatable in overcoming every aspect of the brief"
Event production specialists Ambion GmbH of Kaufungen, Germany, recently supplied the audio requirements of World Fitness Day at the Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt. 35,000 enthusiasts from all over the world flocked to the arena to transform it into a huge fitness adventure park, where everything associated with healthy living and physical fitness was on show. As one of the largest fitness events on the planet, the day attracted huge media attention, as well as a host of companies and prominent figures from the global fitness industry. Two stages were in use throughout the day, with a programme of events that effectively turned the area into the largest gym in the world.
Music reinforcement plays an integral part in fitness work-outs — gyms all over the world invest heavily in high quality audio systems — so it stood to reason those attending a ‘gym’ on this scale would expect and demand the kind of tight, hi-if sound to which they were regularly accustomed. Synchronising mass workouts involving thousands of people would need clean, powerful audio, delivered simultaneously to every participant, regardless of their position in the arena. Florian Vollmer of AMBION installed CODA Audio systems to meet the challenge.
AMBION used 44 x CODA Audio AiRAY units at the Commerzbank Arena. On the centre stage, the challenge was to cover an area 75m deep and 40m wide and fill it with music. The aim was to work without delay lines using left, right and centre reinforcement with near fields and an arc of subs. The system for this stage comprised 24 AiRAY, 6 x ViRAY, 6 x APS, 16 x SCP-F, driven by 10 x LINUS14 amplifiers controlled by 4 x RC20 LINUS CON.
A similar brief was attached to the Active Stage which required excellent intelligibility and power across an area of 50m x 35m. 20 x AiRAY, 6 x ViRAY, 3 x APS, 12 SCP-F driven by 12 x LINUS RACK20 and 1 x LINUS14.
Florian Vollmer commented:
“We were limited by weight restrictions on how large the systems could be but at the same time faced demands to cover an area 75m deep without delays. AiRAY and ViRAY were unbeatable in overcoming every aspect of the brief. The systems were easily powerful enough and delivered a homogenous frequency spectrum over the entire area to be covered. Simple and intuitive to rig, the components of each system — main, centre, near field sub — played together excellently. Both phase and frequency (in the measurement result and reality) are convincing and high frequency is very stable.”
The CODA Systems in action at the Commerzbank Arena needed to be as muscular as the health fanatics that worked out to the pulsating sounds of World Fitness Day. CODA Audio AiRAY and ViRAY, in common with many of the day’s participants, combined to demonstrate that shedding weight doesn’t have to mean losing power!