Lake Contour Pro26D fully digital loudspeaker processors Installed

Washington Professional Systems (WPS) has installed the first two Lake Contour Pro26D digital loudspeaker processors at the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH. Lake Technology Limited recently announced the availability of the Lake Contour Pro26D, a version of the company's digital loudspeaker processor that incorporates a stereo AES/EBU digital input and output as standard. By maintaining a fully digital audio signal path all the way to the speaker processing stage, this latest Lake Contour model offers improved overall audio system quality through the elimination of an unnecessary D-A/A-D conversion stage at the console, which can otherwise color the sound. "With my many years of digital studio and sound reinforcement experience, I believe that the fewer times you convert the signal path, the better," observes Greg Lukens of Washington Professional Systems, a full service contractor and supplier of audio and video systems to major corporate, government, industrial and construction clients. The two digital Lake Contour Pro26D units at the USAF Museum, each operating in 4-way linear phase crossover mode, are integrated with a Yamaha PM1D console and a flown JBL Vertec system that covers an audience area of over 50,000 sq. ft. in the large hanger, one of three at the museum. A Lake Contour is also installed on a supplementary small event system that incorporates smaller JBL Vertec speakers. The two input, six output Lake Contour and new Lake Contour Pro26D incorporate a set of powerful DSP-based equalization and processing tools, including crossovers, dynamics and delays, that allow the optimization of performance sound speaker systems. "The sound quality that we were able to get in the center of a 700-plus foot long hanger was studio monitor quality," Lukens continues. "We were at the mix position, 200 feet from the stage, and making half- and quarter-dB adjustments at 15kHz and 16kHz to trim the openness of the image from the speaker arrays to the openness of the image from the live sound. The band director walked from the stage to the mix position and he couldn't tell when he crossed out of the acoustic sound from the 50-piece orchestra and into the sound system coverage."