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Hortus Audio at the Polytechnic Institute of Macao

The year 2020 was beyond a doubt extremely difficult and challenging for the audio industry. As Covid-19 sadly ravaged the world, our opportunities to interact in person rapidly diminished, and not least at academic institutions.

Although at the time of writing this article the special administrative Chinese autonomous region of Macao remained under Covid-19 restrictions, the Macao Polytechnic Institute has continued to provide critical spaces for teaching, listening, and interacting. Since the summer of 2020, the education facilities have relied on the vital support of Hortus Audio sound systems.

In late 2019, the French pro-audio manufacturer Hortus Audio and its trusted Hong Kong based client since 2017, Sunrise Trading Company, defined a new permanent audio installation for the Macao Polytechnic Institute. The key objective was to provide the faculty and students clear and stellar sound quality for their education. Following a dedicated manufacturing and assembly process, several Hortus Audio products were delivered in two shipments, the second of which lifted off by plane in the early spring of 2020 during the lockdown in France.

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The Macao Polytechnic Institute sought a complete overhaul of its room-by-room sound system. The Sunrise Trading Company order consisted of several Hortus Audio made speakers, amplifiers and bass cabinets: 150 x 3-way full range BZ6 speakers; 55 x AP2-280 amplifiers; 8 x CLA-810 loudspeaker columns; and 6 x CBA12S subwoofers. The installation also included the necessary accessories to place 85 x BZ6L and 85 x BZ6R in parallel to each side of the walls and other accessories were used to attach the loudspeaker columns to the subwoofers. The Hortus Audio products, overviewed below, were installed alongside digital mixers, multimedia teaching controllers, and infrared as well as conference mic systems.

 

The extensive audio setup, which ended up covering 55 lecture rooms and 3 lecture halls, was completed towards the end of the summer of 2020. The smaller rooms have a capacity of around 20 students while the Hortus Audio sound reaches up to 378 people in the largest lecture hall

 

 

The installation team, headed by Sunrise Trading Company’s partners, did not face any notable challenges. The setup unfolded smoothly. Given the budget and project plan, the team designed the most well-tuned approach to diffuse the acoustics within the different set of rooms/halls. The clarity of the sound also had to be configured for online learning, which has steadily assumed greater importance in the institute’s teaching pedagogies amid the pandemic.

The Hortus Audio products were chosen in large part due to the solid results that emanate from previous installations, which cover both speech and music. The key product for the Macao Polytechnic Institute is the 100W AES power BZ6 delivered at 8 ohms. It has a 6’ low frequency speaker and 2 x 3’ mid-frequency speakers. It has a bandwidth (-6dB) between 75Hz and 20kHz, and uses either phoenix or speakon connectors. The BZ6 is a compact and high-performing speaker that forms part of the Hortus Audio Curve Series alongside its smaller counterpart, the BZ5. It is best positioned in parallel to a wall (as pictured below) or utilized as a monitoring speaker.

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In addition to the BZ6, the installation consists of the Hortus Audio AP2-280 amplifier, which has been developed by means of sourcing electronics and hardware within Europe only. The amplifier has two channels x 280W at 4 ohms. Meanwhile, Hortus Audio’s 500W CLA-810 column speaker has 8 x 4’ loudspeakers and a 1’ driver. At 8 ohms, the CLA-810 includes preset digital signal processing (DSP). Its frequency response (-3dB) ranges from 140 Hz to 18 kHz. The 1000W + 2 x 250W 3-way stereo-amplified 12" CBA12S subwoofer also has DSP integrated.

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