Project: Kansas Expocentre, Topeka Kansas
Venue Type: Convention Center
SoundTube Product: HP129i, HP1290i, CM890i, CM890d, CM590i

Retrofit of exhibition hall yields great sound.
Located in Topeka, Kansas, the Kansas Expocentre first opened in 1987. The facility comprises a 9,000 seat arena, a 45,000 square foot exhibition hall, a livestock facility that can stall up to 241 horses, and two smaller halls used for multiple types of events. When an enclosed box office and foyer area was recently added to the complex, facilities Operations Director Roy Mitchell leveraged the work on the new addition to help fix an audio problem throughout the facility.

The Expocentre's exhibition hall had originally been outfitted with about 120 loudspeakers from another manufacturer. "They never sounded all that good," Mitchell says, "about a 3 on a scale of 10. If anyone spoke with any quickness in their voice, for example, an auctioneer, the words would become rumbled and unintelligible. If we had any dignitaries in the building we would have to go out and rent special sound equipment to cut through the fog." Mitchell had been researching different loudspeakers for some time when a stroke of luck settled the matter for him.

"It just happens that I got a free ticket to go to Wendover, Nevada," Mitchell says. "As I was walking through a raucous, noisy casino I noticed the sound was really cutting through and the music was crystal clear. I started checking it out carefully and saw that the casino floors would have one kind of speaker, the buffets would have another type, and still another in the lobby. I ran down some management people there and asked about the speakers in the facility, and was told that SoundTube had provided all of the loudspeakers. When I went back home, I selected SoundTube for the Kansas Expocentre."

SoundTube system designers worked with Mitchell in determining the number of loudspeakers and placement. The design showed that only 18 HP12i loudspeakers were needed to provide full coverage of the main hall, replacing the 120 speakers that had been in use. An additional 8 HP12i speakers were hung in the building.s new foyer area. The concession area in the exhibit hall, which has a 12 foot ceiling, was covered with SoundTube CM590i ceiling-mount loudspeakers. In addition, two SoundTube CM890i models were placed in the exhibition hall to cover a location with a drop ceiling as well as the space above the garage doors entering the exhibition hall.

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