dBS Solutions were so pleased to be involved in the Blenheim Palace’s Festive winter wonderland as part of the illuminated Light Trail. After a freezing week and many frosty mornings, the team finally installed 75 Martin Audio outdoor speakers for Culture Creative, needed for this spectacular feast for your eyes!
Some of the attractions are The towering Tunnel of Light will twinkle with over 100,000 pea-lights, a woodland Laser Garden and enchanting Galaxy Truffles Grove. The event started on the 28th November and ran through until the 1st of January.
“Design on the speaker systems for this event starts once the zones are decided,” says dBS Solutions director Chris Bogg. “We carefully work through the plans of the site with the creative team choosing the right speakers for the sound level, distance and dispersion. We use a few brands of speakers for our outdoor work, but our Martin audio CDD Weather-resistant units were deployed for this year at Blenheim. A selection of 5, 6 and 8-inch speakers are used and their rugged construction along with their waterproof nature and our custom-fitted IP connections make these the perfect tool for the job. “We’ve spent time custom designing and manufacturing a ground spike that mates with these units perfectly,” says Chris. The spike helps us with fast set up and ensures the speakers don’t move around, but also keep them and any joins off the winter ground. This helps to eliminate any problems during the productions four-week run.
You might have seen us earlier in the year testing various amplifiers from a cold start by putting them into the freezer! We tested down to minus eight from a cold start to ensure that the units we chose could battle through the winter and just work day after day. We are pleased to report that we had zero failures on both this site and our other sites in Belton. This kind of unusual work sometimes requires unusual solutions. We’ve also supplied specialist media players for the music in each zone that power up and play from SD cards at set times of the day and power down when the event closes. These units keep time even when the generators are off and have worked consistently this year, again saving lots of time each day on site. The robust players are designed to run and run in all weathers.
We took on the Blenheim site last year and wanted to supply the very best sound quality and reliability we could despite the harsh conditions. The feedback from our client on the difference in Audio quality, the standard of the install and reliability has been great for us to hear. We look forward to working on Blenheim and other sites next year and again Setting Hire Standards.