Dutch singer Jan Smit has been a household name in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany for almost three decades. A recording career which began at the age of just ten has seen Smit become a hugely popular, chart-topping star, who as well as playing to packed arenas, also enjoys a successful TV career as a coach on The Voice of Holland amongst other commitments. Smit recently celebrated his forthcoming fortieth birthday with a show at the AFAS Dome in Antwerp where an audience of 12,000 delivered several standing ovations during a boisterous fun-packed evening. Experienced audio specialist Studio Haifax was engaged by organisers House of Entertainment to take care of the show’s audio, and supplied a CODA Audio system.
System Engineer Lennert Van De Velde of Studio Haifax took care of the project: “We are a trusted partner of House of Entertainment, and have worked at this arena a few times, including on a previous Jan Smit show. For this event we designed a system based on CODA Audio’s VCA ‘family’ of line arrays – ViRAY, CiRAY and the flagship AiRAY.” Studio Haifax has an extensive inventory of CODA Audio and in addition to exceptional sound quality, places a high value on its compact, easy-to-rig nature, which once again proved invaluable according to Lennert: “CODA was the logical choice for this show. The ease with which in can be rigged is always a positive for an arena show like this and the form factor really comes into its own in a show where moving LED walls play a significant part. It was very important to keep clear sightlines, and the VCA family’s compact size really helps without any compromise on output. The AFAS Dome is an acoustically challenging space but System Optimiser (CODA’s proprietary prediction software) made it very easy to design the system, make adaptations, and predict coverage accurately. All the predicted data translated very reliably into the real-world application.”
Studio Haifax deployed a main PA comprising 10 x AiRAY per side (8 at 90° and 2 at 120°), with a further 14 x AiRAY (90°) per side as outfill. 12 x AiRAY (90°) per side acted as delays, with 8 x ViRAY (120°) per side as outfill delays. 10 x CiRAY (90°) provided further delays, with frontfills of 12 x ViRAY (120°). 3 x N-RAY acted as balcony outfill. The low end was provided by 20 x SCV-F sensor-controlled subs per side flown behind the outfill arrays, supplemented by 30 x ground stacked SCP sensor-controlled subs. The system was powered by CODA Audio’s LINUS DSP amplifiers. Lennert sums up another highly successful show: “The combination of a cardioid flown SCV-F sub-array behind the AiRAY system, together with the ground-stacked SCP cardioid sub-array, made for very good control of the low end of the spectrum. By adopting this design, we could keep levels on stage pleasant for the artists and keep low frequency energy away from the empty reverberant areas. The compact high output of the AiRAY, CiRAY, and ViRAY systems provided plenty of headroom and very nice coverage of the venue, without impacting the visuals of the show.”
Global Sales and Marketing Director for CODA Audio, David Webster, comments: “Studio Haifax is a valued customer of our Benelux distributor Viladco, and do consistently fantastic work using CODA Audio systems across a wide variety of applications, ranging from big arena shows through to theatre productions and corporates. It seems that rarely a day goes by without a Studio Haifax CODA system on the road, something that we’re proud of and very happy to see!”
