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Renkus-Heinz Upgrades Sound System at the Grand Hall in Kaunas, Lithuania

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With a nearly 17-year-old sound system and expanding audio needs, the City Council of Kaunas, Lithuania, decided it was time to update its busy Grand Hall meeting space with a high-performance sound solution from Renkus-Heinz. As a regional hub of the Lithuanian economic, academic and cultural life, the Grand Hall — within the city’s modernist, 1940s-era Municipality Building — feature unique elements including a full, stained-glass ceiling and glass art wall that created acoustic challenges for audiences and Council members.

The Kaunas City Council called upon AV integration firm Audiotonas to design and install an appropriate sound solution for the busy meeting space. Vytautas Stasiukaitis, Head of Sales for Audiotonas, explained that the Council needed a loudspeaker solution to provide better sound intelligibility and smoother SPL distribution for its members. Stasiukaitis demonstrated and specified two Renkus-Heinz DC12/2 beam steerable columns to ensure uniform audio coverage and intelligibility.

The audio system within the Grand Hall needed to be flexible enough to use as a public address system for Council meetings, guest presentations, and conferences, in addition to supporting the Council’s AV-based voting system. It was also essential that the system could support streaming video when needed and background music during Council breaks. Audiotonas turned to loudspeakers from Renkus-Heinz to find a solution that would meet the needs of their meetings and additional activities.

“Along with better intelligibility and increased sound levels, it was vital to maintain the hall’s aesthetics,” added Stasiukaitis. “With just two Renkus-Heinz DC12/2 beam steerable columns, the entire hall is covered seamlessly, and match the aesthetic beautifully — you hardly even know they’re there.”

The beautifully designed Art Deco style hall measures nearly 300 square meters and features a multi-level stained-glass ceiling as well as a large stained-glass art wall at the front of the hall, behind the Council seating. A three-tier, U-shaped set of conference tables fill the center of the space. When designing the sound system, it was critical that the new speakers would be able to direct sound away from the ceiling and upper parts of the walls and focus it instead toward the Council members, participants and audiences.

Renkus-Heinz beam steering technology allows the DC12/2 loudspeakers to tightly control the sound in the Grand Hall and place it where it’s needed— on the audience. Intelligibility is essential for the Grand Hall of Kaunas, and the Renkus-Heinz digitally steered loudspeaker system ensures that every listener receives the best sound possible by outputting a tight and asymmetrical beam of sound.

“DC12/2 arrays were the sound solution for accomplishing the City Council’s sound system upgrade goals while preserving the elegant hall aesthetics,” adds Michał Popławski, European Technical Sales Manager at Renkus-Heinz.

“The City Council is very happy with the sound quality and coverage, and the intelligibility is excellent,” said Stasiukaitis. “This is why we use Renkus-Heinz; we can always trust that the results will be perfect in the end.”

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