An OAP Audio Holiday

The main ballroom of a luxury cruise ship is one of the vessel's most utilized all-purpose rooms. Passengers first check into their state rooms, unpack, then they're off to the main ballroom for the cruise orientation meeting. That night it's a Las Vegas style stage show in the ballroom with live and pre-recorded music and vocals. For the duration of the cruise, the sound system is called upon for event announcements, new port-of-call orientation meetings, more event announcements, afternoon bingo and two live shows per evening. The main ballroom and its sound system are in use almost 12 hours a day. Since the vessel's ballroom sound system is required for everything from entertainment to vital information announcements, it has to perform it's functions flawlessly time after time. To the passengers, being aboard a luxury cruise liner for one week with a less-than-stellar main ballroom sound system is equivalent to being overrun by pirates. Asking the passengers which they prefer, they would probably respond, "How many pirates?"

While pirates have never been a real issue to the cruise ship industry, high fidelity sound is, and will continue to be, a very serious issue. Since 1984, Javier Pinagel, President of Soundshine, Inc., established in 1990, of North Miami, Florida, makes a large part of his living installing and maintaining the audio and video systems aboard many cruise ships. His most recent accomplishment involved installing a 90 percent custom OAP Audio sound system in the 500-seat Americana Room-the main ballroom-on the Carnival Cruise ship Holiday. The Americana Room audio system was only part of a major audio system retrofit. According to Mr. Pinagel, "This was the first complete audio system overhaul since the ship was built in 1985. It served the ship very well for almost ten years, but it definitely had out-lived it's usefulness."

Due to the time and budget constraints as well as special equipment requirements, Mr. Pinagel chose OAP Audio of Buford, Georgia to supply the loudspeakers. "Carnival contacted me to do the job but stressed that the time frame to complete the job was very narrow," notes Javier. "The Holiday was to dock on a Sunday and then set sail again the following Saturday. We needed to install the main ballroom sound system, as well as the main discotheque and arcade sound systems and fiber optic lighting. OAP Audio was chosen, since they were well qualified to meet the tight deadline on this project."

Soundshine and OAP Audio have worked closely together on other similar cruise ship sound system designs and installations. Many of the custom speakers that were required for the Holiday had been developed specifically for the parameters of the Americana Room. According to Michael O'Rouke, President of OAP Audio, "Javier called on November 17, 1994 and advised me of a possible rush job for one of the Carnival ships. Javier and I had worked on another cruise liner design similar to the Holiday, so we were marginally prepared for this order since it came out of the blue. We faxed prices to Javier on the 18th and received the go-ahead November 21st. Blue prints were received in our office on November 22."

A worker installs a custom mounting bracket on an OAP FR-822 loudspeaker.

Mr. O'Rouke continues, "Once we had the speaker specs, with Javier's assistance, we sat down with the designers and came up with several new speaker designs that would fit this application. I even visited the local travel agency to obtain a book about Carnival Cruises, so I'd have more information about the Holiday. I needed to know how the ship was laid out, its size, deck layout, just a general overview. We needed as much information as possible on a very short notice. There was no way I had the time to fly to Miami and look at the ship. For other projects on which Javier and I have worked, I always had the time to check out the vessel beforehand."

Loudspeaker design and construction were completed quickly and the speakers were delivered to the ship at the port of Miami on December 3. The ship docked at 7 a.m. that morning, and the staff of Soundshine was moving equipment into place immediately after it cleared customs. Mr. Pinagel notes, "We were in the ballroom at 7 a.m. each day and finally went home for a few hours sleep at around 10 p.m."

Four OAP T-1202 two-way, full range loudspeakers are utilized for the front-of-house left and right speaker clusters. In the Americana Room, a large portion of the audience seating is directly beneath the main speaker clusters. To provide sound coverage for this large section of the audience, four custom T-1202EH loudspeakers were utilized. The T-1202EH is a third the size of its T-1202 counterpart and features one two-inch high frequency horn per cabinet.

Seven custom FR-82 full range, nearfield loudspeakers are mounted to the stainless steel structural support poles, fourteen feet above the first balcony. The FR-82s cover the left and right side balconies. Six FR-822 full range, nearfield loudspeakers are utilized for main floor sound fill. The third level of the room and under-balcony areas utilize a total of nine UBF-622 wideangle loudspeakers. The UBF-622 loudspeakers feature twin six-inch drivers and a one-inch horn in an ultra-compact package. Mounted directly to the ceiling or the under-balcony lip, the UBF-622s provide the necessary sound coverage for these hard to reach areas. Two TR-218 subwoofers are utilized stage left and right and provide the main floor low end coverage. Two time delayed TR-215 custom subs are utilized for rear balcony low end coverage. The TR-215 subwoofers were designed to fit into a very small alcove areas of the balcony. "The TR-215s are set back, almost completely into the walls," notes Javier. "With the special cabinet design of the TR-215, we were able to get them out of the way of the aisle by setting them back as we did."

Power for all loudspeaker systems is supplied by Crown Macro-Tech Series amplifiers rack-mounted in the control booth. Two Macro-Tech MA-2400's provide plenty of low-end power, while two MA-1200's drive mid-lows and two MA-600's handle high-frequencies. A combination of two MA-1200's and four MA-600's are used with the full-bandwidth delay systems, while a single MA-1200 supplies plenty of power for the stage monitor system. Javier notes that Soundshine consistently uses Crown amplifiers for all of its cruise ship work. "Their overall quality is the attraction, both from sound and reliability standpoints," he says. "We're very pleased with the new MA-2400, it's a nice addition to the series."

Three Crown MA-1200 amps remain from the existing system, as does the Soundcraft Spirit model Live Four twenty-four channel mixing console. Rane ME-15 and ME-30 Equalizers, AC-23 and AC-22 Crossovers and AD-22 time delay units make up the bulk of the outboard gear.

Javier concludes, "Carnival wants even, smooth sound coverage so everyone, in every seat can hear everything with the utmost clarity. Since the system's installation, there have been nothing but rave reviews. The Captain of the Holiday, upon hearing the system for the first time, was so delighted he even hugged me. I really can't imagine this installation turning out much better except for having a little more time to do the job."