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Sounds great for Crocodile Hunter at the Australian Zoo
Australia
Zoo, located 1 hour north of Brisbane, is one of Australia’s leading
entertainment and wildlife parks. It is owned and managed by the
Crocodile Hunter, an Australian icon who has made a name for himself as
the khaki-clad “Aussie”, and whose popularity has increased dramatically
over the past few years both at home and overseas.
The park, which was opened in 1970, today is home to over 750 animals on over 50 acres of land. To cater for the growing crowds, the park has recently undergone a major upgrade and significant expansion of its public address system. This major sound development project was divided into two stages and Audia, TOA and AKG products were selected for the install. Stage One covered the installation of distributed audio and a hierarchy of prioritised audio control throughout the whole Zoo, and Stage Two included the sound system installation for the brand new auditorium, suitably named “Crocoseum”. The Crocoseum is a horseshoe-shaped, stadium style arena with a roof covering 75% of its 5,000 seating capacity, making it the biggest venue of its type in Australia. Management insisted that the quality of the sound system had to be consistent with the rest of the venue, the best of its kind. Stadiums worldwide are notorious for poor sound, large reflective surfaces and long distances, which can seriously impede intelligibility. In the case of the Crocoseum, which spans nearly 70m in length and width, the combination of the right speakers and control system was essential. To provide full control, the system was split into 18 individual zones, with all signal processing handled by Audia, Biamp’s new Digital Audio Platform.
The sound required for the park’s expansion needed to be reliable, cater for all weather conditions, and provide background music and high quality speech audio for live presentations. The staff at Australia Zoo also required a flexible and reliable system which allowed for the control of the paging system and the hierarchy of the priority muting to be carried out simply and efficiently. Wildlife presentations scheduled over the course of each day require simple prioritising of selected zones so that each presenter could be heard through a wireless microphone system in whichever arena he or she may be in. Ducking of other sources is achieved automatically once the presenter switches on his or her microphone. The biggest challenge to overcome whilst working on the installation was being able to provide the correctly prioritised ducking levels automatically. The use of Audia’s algorithms enabled the sound technicians to overcome this.
Equipment used in the final installation included: Audia 8 x 8 Cobranet, AudiaFlex CobraNet, Audio EXPO, Logic box, TOA UHF Wireless microphones, AKG wireless microphones, TOA 900 Series amplifiers, TOA CS Series weatherproof music horn speakers, TOA BS1030 speakers and TOA EV350R digital announcer. Audio Products Australia was able to provide a complete audio package to meet the requirements of the park, whilst the speakers and amplification for the Crocoseum’s sound reinforcement were supplied by Acoustic Technologies in Brisbane. The Crocodile Hunter and Australia Zoo staff now entertain an audience of up to 5,000 on a daily basis in the Crocoseum with high quality sound. Crikey, it sounds tops, mate! |
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