Unusual solar-powered beach installation for Apart Audio

Eight-tower system was installed by Spectral AV Solutions.

David Davies

After an extensive period of research, multiple lifeguard towers on Sentosa Beach, Singapore, were recently equipped with an Apart Audio sound system to satisfy the requirements for a solar powered configuration. Installed by Spectral AV Solutions, the new system covers eight lifeguard towers and is designed to be used for emergency announcements and playback of prerecorded announcements to the visitors at the beach.

One of the key requirements of the system was that it needed to be operable on 12Vdc, as the towers are powered via solar panel. There must also be intelligibility between the two towers, which are situated approximately 100m apart. The installer proposed eight Apart MA35 mixing amplifiers with 16 MPLT32-G horn loudspeakers and eight MICPACB-D microphones.

Because of the 12Vdc requirement, the PA system is integrated with Sennheiser’s GuidePort 16-Key playback for all pre-recorded announcements in four languages (English, Mandarin, Malay & Tamil), thereby enabling the announcement without any connections to any external CD players (which are powered by 230Vac).

Reflecting on the new configuration, beach operations manager Julian remarked: “We experienced difficulty trying to find a suitable PA system that was operable with 12Vdc via Solar Power. The Apart MA-35 meets our requirement aptly. The sound intelligibility for all pre-recorded announcements is sufficiently audible in the open beach from tower to tower.”

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