QFlex - Brochure

Let’s begin with the basics. The architect
designs a fantastic looking venue, both
inside and out. The audience has assembled
and is dazzled by the well designed
combination of lighting, glass, surfaces,
array of colours and textures on show.
But what is the real reason they have
gathered in this stunning auditorium? This
may be a place to hear (and see) a lecture,
performance or sermon. A stunning looking
venue may well be appreciated for its
aesthetics; but equally a performance venue
is remembered by how it sounds.
Sound originates at the source (the
loudspeaker). Generally the loudspeaker is
a distance from the audience. The greater
the audience, the further from the speaker
they have to sit, unless a distributed system
with a large number of loudspeakers is
employed. This option is invariably
unacceptable from an aesthetic point
of view.
The sound wave which is emitted by a
conventional loudspeaker expands as a
sphere. By the time the sound has reached
its intended participant it has expanded by
a massive amount. Only a tiny fraction
of the sound which comes from the
loudspeaker (direct sound) actually reaches
the listeners ear, typically 1% in a large
auditorium. The remaining 99% of the
sound is called the indirect sound. It’s the
indirect sound which contributes to
unintelligible sound if it is neglected.
Treating a venue with absorptive or diffuse
surface s can be prohibitively expensive.
However there is another solution…
QFlex is able to focus the acoustical output in the target directions where it
is needed, delivering significant improvements to speech intelligibility and
musical clarity in reverberant spaces, i.e. increase the “Hall Radius” beyond
which reverberant sound becomes dominant.