Exhibo, EAW Team Up For Prestigious Galileo Awards

Distributed System Approach With Controlled Loudspeaker Coverage Produces Highly Intelligible Sound Reinforcement

Whitinsville, MA – May 10, 2007 – EAW LS432 line source loudspeakers and JF50 compact loudspeakers were deployed to provide highly intelligible sound reinforcement at the Galileo Awards, held recently in Padua, Italy, to honor scientific inquiry and literature.

The prestigious event was fittingly hosted at the historic Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, the city that was the site of Galileo's observatory in the early 1600's when he helped complete an astronomical revolution. Palazzo della Ragione is one of the most important ancient buildings of the European Age of Commons, constructed starting in 1218.

The beautiful hall, measuring 82 meters long and 27 meters wide, has a roof shaped as a reversed hull, with hard surfaces abounding. These physical parameters create a very difficult acoustic situation for amplified sound reinforcement.

The sound team appointed for the event - Target Due of Padova and Full Sound Service of Pressana, both supported by EAW Italy Distributor Exhibo S.p.A. – devised a distributed sound approach utilizing just 16 loudspeakers, most of them stand-mounted. The LS432 loudspeakers were positioned along the long walls of the hall and then supplemented in specific regions by JF50's.

"Due to its extremely high reverberation time, the room has always been a nightmare for rental companies," explains Riccardo Rasponi of Exhibo. “With speech intelligibility being by far the highest of priorities for this event, it dictated loudspeakers with extremely narrow and controlled vertical coverage patterns within the speech frequency spectrum. The LS432 did this job perfectly."

Exhibo Electroacoustic Designer Guido Diamanti adds: "We did some careful calculations in order to determine the exact right number of loudspeakers, to be sure that not only could enough sound pressure level be attained, but also to avoid stray energy that would serve as reverberated sound."

All went very well with the application, Rasponi notes, and in fact, Padua authorities have already requested that the same system be utilized for other events being held later this year at Palazzo della Ragione.

                                                                            ###

About EAW
Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) is a global leader in producing high-performance professional audio equipment trusted by the most discerning professionals for every possible sound reinforcement application. EAW is a registered trademark of LOUD Technologies Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

###

Photo Captions: (click on photos for hi-res version)

EAW News Image – Galileo-1: A view of the highly reverberant Palazzo della Ragione during the system setup process.	EAW News Image – Galileo-2: EAW LS432 line source loudspeakers positioned on stands along one of the long walls of the room to provide focused distributed sound reinforcement.