For many years, the Roshen Confectionery factory on Nauka Avenue 1 in Kyiv has been arranging illuminations for New Year and Christmas holidays which turns production buildings into a canvas for bright fairy-tale pictures. And on December 7, 2019, the official opening of the open-air skating rink and the Christmas fair in the park on the territory of the factory under the common name took place here Roshen Winter Village. This is a gift to the residents of Kyiv and visitors to the capital by the Roshen Corporation as part of the program of reconstruction and beautification of the territory under the general name Roshen Plaza, in which the Sound House company is the executor of works on sound and multimedia figuration. The opening of the rink was the first visible stage of this program.

​

      At the initial stage of the implementation of this project, our specialists were tasked with providing uniform sounding with a high level of signal quality on square of the rink and the surrounding area, and over time, it was expanded to sounding the adjacent Christmas market with a food court. In addition to the direct broadcast of the musical material, it was necessary to provide playing pre-recorded informational messages by pressing the relevant buttons by the operator, as well a provide messages from the microphone terminal.

​

      First, some numbers - the area of the egg-shaped rink is more than 2 thousand square meters, right in the middle of the New Year's rink a 15 m tall Christmas tree through which the tunnel passes. Sound and artistic lighting of the ice rink is provided by six masts located along the perimeter of the ice rink at different distances from each other.

​

      There were no issues with the control and power system - the first and only option was a system based on controllers, microphone amplifiers by Dynacord, but we had to work with the visible and audible part of the system,  namely the loudspeakers. From the very beginning, according to the terms of reference, horn systems were declared for the sounding of the rink, but we managed to convince both the customer and the general contractor that such sound sources do not provide an adequate level of sound pressure, the uniformity of coverage, the level of intelligibility, the quality of the signal, which were key requirements (this is the area of Demiivska Square with a large transport interchange, a bus station and an avenue with heavy traffic). Our arguments are confirmed by calculations of modeling the object in the EASE program with different types of sound sources. In the end, the choice was made with the help of the Electro-Voice SX600PIX loudspeaker systems, which have proven themselves excellently at hundreds of facilities around the world, as well as at many of our facilities and the facilities of our partners in Ukraine. This is a vertical array, which consists of two elements - the Sx300 PIX broadband system and the Sb122 subwoofer in an all-weather version with a matching transformer, united by a common frontal protective grid. The maximum power of each speaker system is 600 W, and the maximum sound pressure level is 136 dB.

​

      The main difficulty of this part of the project was that the round field of ice rink is sounded from the outer ring, the acoustic systems are placed opposite each other and there are problems with the reflection of the sound signal from the smooth ice. The uneven location of the masts, on which the acoustic systems were installed, around the rink also played a significant role here. However, thanks to the diagram of vertical and horizontal dispersion of the acoustic systems themselves and careful focusing on the middle of the rink, between the center and the outer edge, this effect was reduced to a minimum and a practically uniform sound field was obtained. As for the last task, with sounding the Christmas fair with a food court on the territory adjacent to the ice rink arena, there were no problem - Electro-Voice EVC1082PIB loudspeaker systems from the new EVC installation series were temporarily installed here, which will be used the ice rink season is over and will be used to announce the next stage of the Roshen Plaza project.

​

As for the control and amplification of the sound system, here, as mentioned above, a system based on Dynacord equipment was involved:

​

• Processor Dynacord P64, with boards OM, MI, AO

• Dynacord PMX4-CR12 processor with PMX-15 microphone terminal

• Dynacord DSA 8805 amplifier

​

      Processors and power amplifiers are located in the main building of the factory, and the microphone terminal is located in the ice rink rental room, from where the operator can play pre-recorded messages (a request to leave the field to clear the ice, messages about the beginning and end of the rink, etc.) or make urgent announcements through the microphone.

​

      Configuration and management of the main parameters of the system is carried out in the Electro-Voice IRIS-Net software shell, which was created individually user interface with basic operating parameters. Also, all necessary individual delays, filters and frequency adjustments of each speaker system are prescribed here.

​

      Sound content is controlled from the software player AMOZzPlayer, which provides easy control through a simple and clear WEB interface, has separate playlists for different broadcast zones, as well as a full-fledged task scheduler, with which you can perform any operations with playback, volume control, as well as starting and stopping broadcasting. Broadcasting from AMOZzPlayer to the sound system takes place according to the modern audio transmission protocol over the Audinate Dante network using the Dante Virtual Soundcard, which in WDM mode allows separate broadcasting of up to 16 broadcast zones.

​

      The result of the work performed by our specialists completely satisfied our general contractor, a well-known company Les Eclaireurs and all responsible representatives of the Roshen Corporation, and most importantly, visitors to the rink during the winter holidays! Despite the completely non-winter weather, Roshen Winter Village managed to create a festive atmosphere and, as most visitors note, it is the most atmospheric New Year's location in Kyiv this winter! By the way, according to Roshen, the rink will be open until March 8, 2020, so if you haven't been here yet, you have a chance to personally "taste" the ice and enjoy the holiday atmosphere!