In Rozzano – a town in the Milan hinterland, the town council’s department for juvenile policies has entrusted Sunrise Cooperative with the management of Spazio Aurora, a multi-function venue offering local youngsters a meeting place for expanding their social and cultural life, by means of courses, social projects and other events, such as shows, dance nights and quality concerts at very reasonable prices.
As well as a school of music with a wide variety of lessons, there are also three rehearsal rooms with professional instruments and an audio recording studio, complete with control room.
The main room has a 32x16 ft. stage that hosts concerts and performances of all kinds, with groups (cover pop bands, punk and hard rock line-ups) swing bands and DJ-sets, but also weekly shows with comedians, cabaret artists and entertainment for kids of all ages, with puppet shows, games and clowns.
The sound reinforcement system chosen to meet the needs of such a widely varied calendar consists in Yamaha Installation Series loudspeakers, with relative power amplifiers and audio processor, all installed by Audio Progetti Srl.
Founded recently by a group of professionals with years of experience in various sectors of the pro audio world, Audio Progetti is based in Cavenago Brianza (near Milan) and specialized in system design, sale and installation. Stefano Papetti, the firm’s technical sales manager and managing director, explained, “As a company, we are firm believers in product demos as the most effective sales tool, and the system installed at Spazio Aurora was chosen following a demo we staged there with loudspeaker enclosures from Yamaha’s Installation series, during which the venue’s technicians were extremely favourably impressed by the rig’s sound pressure and reproduction quality, even if we only used a limited number of power amplifiers.”
Papetti, who has considerable experience in designing systems for recording studios, theatres and various other types of installations, continued, “The very first time I heard the Installation Series enclosures, I was also extremely favourably impressed - mainly for their sound pressure, but also for the acoustic quality they’re able ensure at all volumes.”
The two Installation Series IF2115/64 full-range enclosures used in "Biamp + Sub" mode as the main system at Spazio Aurora are multi-function high-powered systems fitted with 15” woofers. Dispersion can be controlled thanks to the systems’ rotatable horn, which enables them to be easily installed horizontally or vertically, ensuring utmost adaptability when space considerations dictate speaker orientation.
The IF2115 units are used along with a pair of Installation Series IS1215 subwoofers, which have twin 15” speakers, the ideal combination for the full-range systems, to obtain the maximum power and best reproduction over the entire audio spectrum covered. On the opposite side of the room, two Installation Series IF2208 are installed, compact two-way systems with twin 8” woofers. Here too, the fact that the horn was rotatable enabled the enclosures to be positioned exactly as required. The numerous groups and other acts alternating on stage also have four Club Series CM12V monitors at their disposal.
Under the stage, the rack of units powering and controlling the system included three different models from Yamaha’s XP series of power amplifiers: an XP3500 for the horns of the IF2115/64 enclosures and an XP7000 for their woofers, an XP5000 for the subwoofers, an XP3500 for the systems mounted opposite the stage and another two of the same model, powering the stage monitors. The system’s signal processing and distribution is handled by a Yamaha SP2060 Speaker Processor, optimized for precise control of the Installation Series of loudspeakers used in the venue. The loudspeakers’ data are preset in the SP2060, enabling the necessary settings to be carried out in a few simple steps, ensuring extremely user-friendly system management and control.
The processor’s exclusive LSI technology guarantees exceptional sound quality, as well as a phenomenal dynamic range and a signal/noise ratio of over 110 dB. Among its numerous built-in functions, gain, delay, parametric equalization, compression, crossover and limiter all play essential roles in the set-up’s loudspeaker management. The extremely precise “all-pass” filter also allows very precise control of just the phase, without changing the gain.
Papetti continued, “The system was set for three-way use, and the processor is used as a crossover, limiter and compressor for the full-range enclosures – with this technique, the set-up is extremely flexible. For the power amplifiers, we opted for the XP series, which are excellent units that run very quietly, and the system was designed using Yamaha’s Y-S3 Sound System Simulator software to study the sound and configure the appropriate presets.”
As well as running his recording studio, located on the first floor at Spazio Aurora, Lorenzo Catinella is also in charge of the audio set-up in the room with the Yamaha PA, and confirmed, “For the various outputs, I created and stored a series of presets – we’ve got a preset for DJ sets, a “Live” preset, with more punch on the bottom end, another that has a bit more compression, and one with a compression threshold that reacts to low input signals, but ensures we have precise powerful sound even on nights when we don’t have a large crowd in the room, but nevertheless need a good compromise between the mixer’s output and the processor’s capacity to exploit the system’s horns and woofers.“
Catinella confirmed that the system was definitely up to the task of handling the numerous different events staged in the venue, “The amps are excellent, with good balance, and the range is smooth in the mid/high and high frequencies - which gives a nice warmer sound. The loudspeakers have a three-way crossover set-up – with amps dedicated to each section and, in fact, the full-range enclosures perform so well I had to gradually reduce their power to obtain a more balanced overall sound – something that doesn’t happen every day with other brands on the market. We chose a rather unusual layout for the installation, with the two IF2208 mounted opposite the front-of-house loudspeakers, to enable us to have more volume on the microphones, as the problem of getting the vocals heard well over the instruments - without running any risks of feedback - is always an absolute priority in all types of live music situations.”
Bands performing at the venue have also been enthusiastic about the results achieved, as Catinella explained: “We’ve had some nights with seven groups performing in four hours – each playing a different genre – and at the end they congratulated us and thanked us for the great sound n the room – the ideal combination of precision, power and response.”
Papetti concluded, “After this installation, Spazio Aurora asked us to design another system for the venue’s bar zone, which will be used for background music, and we’ve also used Yamaha Installation Series loudspeakers in other very different locations – from space at the Venice Biennale to a ”wellness” centre in southern Italy.”
