Mexico. On May 9 and 10, the company Rocketerías, distributors of the EAW brand (Eastern Acoustics Works) in Mexico made the presentation of a new technology.
EAW has developed a new series of products which it calls "Adaptive". The series consists of 3 speakers that have as a peculiarity that adapt their dispersion according to the place where they are used.
For this launch, Rocketerías invited Bernie Broderick, who in past decades worked for other linear array companies and today develops as a technical training manager for the EAW brand.
A certification seminar was held headed by Broderick and assisted by Emilio Torres, who is the brand's product specialist. It was held in the Astros tent and was attended by around 60 engineers. The seminar explained everything from the difference between point source horn arrangements to the new adaptive ones. A training was carried out with the Resolution 2 software that allows to control and configure the system and finally on the 10th the training of the hanging and physical configuration of the equipment was done until it was ready to work.
The event ended with a cocktail attended by some owners of rental companies and was enlivened by a group of musicians of the Roland brand.
For the past decade, the market has been using linear-type horn arrays. That is, arrangements that work in the same way as a single column of speakers, allowing to control their vertical dispersion in a more effective way than that of traditional point source systems. Linear arrays are configured through prediction software that usually indicates the position and configuration that must be used to make the array as effective as possible.
However, this technology has problems with horizontal coverage, since despite having coverages of more than 100 horizontal degrees, they do not reach to cover uniformly areas of 180 degrees for example.
Another weak point of linear arrangements is that their configuration must be mechanical, that is, the software throws information that indicates the inclination that each of the boxes placed in the vertical arrangement must have, which takes a while and also requires the help of motors and personnel to adjust each angle.
Adaptive arrangements seek to avoid precisely the mechanical configuration almost entirely. Although they still depend on being hung, their configuration is not angled, that is, they are arrays that are hung vertically and the coverage is managed through software that in addition to predicting, manages and designs the directional patterns of the system.
It achieves this through controlling rather than a general signal for the boxes, hundreds of independent signals within them. For example, the flagship speaker of the series is called ANYA. It is a speaker that has 22 internal components, that is, it has 2 units of 15 inches, 14 units of treble in arrangements of 7 and 6 units of 6 inches for media.
Each of these units has its own amplifier and a dsp controller, which gives us a total of 22 amplifiers, 22 drivers and 22 processors inside a loudspeaker. The software is responsible for controlling each of these components and achieving the desired coverage from the software. No need to make mechanical corrections that often involve lowering the horn arrangement and moving angles.
In addition to this, each box has an integrated diffuse field measurement microphone that allows the box to self-evaluate. Its audio power can range from analog to DANTE ® protocol .and it is precisely in this protocol that the boxes communicate with each other and with the software generating a redundant network that has a primary and a secondary input.
In later days, free talks open to the public were held at the CAM school.
Alejandro Barbosa, owner of Rocketerías said that several similar seminars will be held in different parts of the Mexican Republic starting with one in Cancun Quintana Roo in July.
