The Prince of Wales Museum as a part of their improvement programme decided to upgrade their visitors lounge. They wanted to screen purpose-made videos, showcasing the city across the width of three screens as a part of an orientation to the museum.

An American architect was deputed to design the room. While all the practical and aesthetic aspects were taken care of sound remained a challenge. Since they were going to use the venue for screening videos as well as for seminars and talks, the hall needed to be versatile acoustically with the prospect of mics being passed to the audience and the possibility of the lector walking among the audience, the powerful monitoring system would then be prone to problems of feedback.

Moreover due to the sporadic nature of the halls usage, it would not be viable to hire a qualified sound engineer to setup the system each time the configuration changed. Since the lectors addressing the audience were academic in nature, there would be some who would speak softly and some who would speak loudly. Some with high shrill voices and others with deep bass voices. We approached this by first designing the acoustic treatment for the place such that there was adequate damping yet minimal interference with the architect’s visual design. Devices were added in the installers equipment chain which automated the equalization of the signal and smoothened out the lectors delivery and also eliminated feedback therefore creating an environment for the lectors to conduct a lecture without being conscious of the electronics being used.