RoomMatch® loudspeakers and PowerMatch® amplifiers are more than up to the challenge to create the right system for an acoustically challenging space
Framingham, Massachusetts, March 13, 2014 – Saint Louis University’s newly opened Center for Global Citizenship is both a practical initiative to bring several campus services under a single roof, and a strongly symbolic move that represents the school’s commitment to its internationally diverse student body, drawn from 101 nations around the world. When this wide-ranging group assembles in the new Center, it needs powerful and highly intelligible sound, and that’s exactly what is provided by RoomMatch® loudspeakers and PowerMatch® amplifiers from Bose® Professional Systems. TSI Technology Solutions, a division of TSI Global, the integrator used by the University to design and install the Center’s AV systems, assembled a system consisting of six RoomMatch loudspeakers (three RM9020 and three RM9010 modules) and two RMS215 subwoofers, all powered by three Bose PowerMatch PM8500N amplifiers.
The Center for Global Citizenship is built into the former West Pine Gym on the SLU Frost campus. It brings together the Office of International Services, the International Studies Program and the English as a Second Language Program, which had all been previously separated on the Frost Campus. Its mission, which University President Emeritus Lawrence Biondi, S.J., stated, is “to make a world of difference, not just here at home, but also around the globe. This project demonstrates our commitment to international education and is a clear sign that SLU truly has become a global university.” To accomplish their mission effectively, the Center needed a quality sound system that would provide even, consistent coverage throughout the large space and also offer a high degree of intelligibility, difficult in what was once a basketball court. That’s where TSI turned to Bose Professional Systems.
“This is a space that can seat up to a thousand people, so the sound has to have sufficient coverage, and it also has to be completely understandable to everyone listening,” explains Paul Murdick, President of TSI. “It’s a highly reverberant space and due to several considerations, including the fact that the building has historical significance whose integrity we had to maintain, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to address the acoustics with treatment alone,” he says. “We needed a great sound system that can achieve excellent intelligibility in any environment, and that’s what the RoomMatch system can do.”
TSI utilized Bose Modeler® software to design the PA system around the room’s architecture, producing both an accurate predictive layout of coverage patterns that saw RoomMatch enclosures suspended from three hangpoints above and following the curve of the stage. A center cluster included an RM9010 and an RM9020 module, and the left and right clusters each included, RM9010 and RM9020 modules and an RMS215 subwoofer. “This customer is very visually oriented,” says Murdick. “Thanks to the Modeler software, they were able to see exactly what the system was going to look like once it was installed. That’s a feature that clients find very reassuring – it helps us meet customer expectations, and it really helps keep up a high level of communication between us. Every guideline was met – this package of technologies from Bose takes us from design to execution flawlessly every step of the way.