SSE at Royal Opening

SSE Hire

A unique sound design was required to meet the demands of a variety of opening events from the official opening by Her Majesty the Queen to a staff party for over 3,000 people.

A central feature of RBS’s new HQ facilities at Gogarburn is ‘the Street’, running the full 170m length of the building. This provides a range of high street outlets including Tesco Metro and Starbucks as well as a 500 seater restaurant.

The street became the venue for the opening events, themed into three areas. At one end a stage was erected for the official opening for the Queen, then a rapid turnaround called for the removal of the main stage to the other end of the street for the evening party.

The challenge was to provide flexible and independent sound coverage of voice, playback and live music at different times in three separate zones, while at other times a gentle, transparent sound reinforcement, was required to fill the whole space.

An important consideration in the audio design was for the installation to be discreet. The main sound system used was a Nexo Geo-S array flown from ground supports on the main stage. This was supplemented by 53 Nexo PS8s installed with custom brackets on delays running the length of the street.

Over 3km of low smoke cable was installed out of view under the floor and in a specially constructed duct above the street to make the installation ‘invisible’ and custom terminated to length on site.

The cabinets were individually time aligned in a reconfigurable format that could be called up to accommodate various activities occurring at different times at opposite ends of the street. Two control positions were installed out of view with an Innovason digital desk driving the system.

Live music for a party for over 3,000 was provided by Tony Hadleigh, Peter Cox and Jools Holland.

Miles Hillyard, Project Manager at SSE, commented: “In many respects, this job was a hybrid between a hire contract and a permanent installation. We were able to apply SSE’s solutions approach to this project, combining our expertise as a hire company with our manufacturing capabilities and the know- how of our installations department”.