Electro-Voice Installation for UK's Newest Equestrian Arena

Hartpury College is the leading university in the UK for land-based studies and sport. It has invested nearly £5 million into this world-class complex, which will provide a fantastic teaching environment for students and a top-class competition venue to stage local, regional and international competition. Its inaugural event, the FEI World Para Dressage Championships, proved such a success that Hartpury’s Indoor Arena has already been selected to host the Blue Chip Winter Show Jumping Championships, the British Dressage Winter Championships, the International Para Dressage and the RDA National Championships.

The Hartpury Arena includes a 70m x 40m competition surface, a covered warm-up area, a 150-seat panoramic restaurant and bar and hospitality boxes/classrooms. On a gala night, there is seating for 600 spectators and plenty of standing room.

Nick Chubb and his Show Hire team worked closely with John Ellis of Shuttlesound to come up with a versatile specification for the Indoor Arena. Having settled on the Electro-Voice brand, the challenge was then to devise a system that would handle the prestige competitions and displays in the arena, especially the prize-giving ceremonies, but also work very simply, allowing a teacher to access the system’s functionality on a self-op basis, running just a simple mixing surface and a radio microphone.

Show Hire selected EV’s “designer“ compact cabinets, the EVIDs, for the restaurant areas, powered by EV’s new PA range of 100 V line amplifiers. The choice for the main arena was a centre cluster of EV Zx5s, powered by amplifiers from EV’s CP Series. “We had to contend with a metal roof over the arena, brick walls and large expanses of glass,“ says Nick Chubb of ShowHire. “In fact, the only thing working in our favor acoustically was the sand floor. However, it was comparatively easy to run the cabling for the central Zx5 cluster, and the result sounds tremendous, whether there are just a couple of people and horses, or a competition in full flood.“

The spectator areas and hospitality balconies are provided with pairs of EV Sx300, giving seamless coverage the length and depth of the areas, all powered by CP Series amplifiers. System control to time align and equalize the system is by Dx38 controllers.

This is the first major installation for Milford-based ShowHire, which has a 30-year track record of working with outdoor events, particularly those in the equestrian calendar, and is now actively moving into fixed installation.

For further information, visit www.shuttlesound.com

###



Guy Low

Sr. Copywriter | MarCom

Bosch Communications Systems

Telex Communications, Inc.

12000 Portland Ave. South

Burnsville, MN 55337

Phone: 952-736-3935

Fax: 952-736-4582

guy.low@us.telex.com

James Edlund

Public Relations Manager

Bosch Communications Systems

Telex Communications, Inc.

12000 Portland Ave. South

Burnsville, MN 55337

Phone: 952-736-3901

Fax: 952-736-4582

james.edlund@us.telex.com