Pasadena, CA | July, 2017 - Known for efficient, focused, high-intensity workouts, Basecamp Fitness maintains three popular locations in Southern California and two in Northern California. High-energy music helps fuel workouts at these centers; at the same time, patrons need to hear their instructors clearly. That's a lot to ask of a sound system, so when the old systems in the three Southern California locations proved inadequate, the company brought in respected Orange County, California, design/build firm Tekworks. Tekworks came through with a complete solution based on Renkus-Heinz IC Live Gen5 loudspeakers.

"We have been working with Basecamp Fitness over the past couple of years, perfecting the audio-video experience for their clients," begins Tekworks Director of AV Dave Novak. "Intelligibility is the number one priority in these facilities. We need loud music so people can get into their workouts, and we need lots of low frequencies—that pumping bass. But above everything, people have to understand what the instructor is telling them. So intelligibility is key."

As if the demands of intelligibility combined with high-SPL music weren't enough, the spaces proved challenging. "Acoustically, these are terrible environments; it's like a big metal box, with reverberant sound," observes Novak. "The rooms have lots of mirrors, glass, and concrete and lots of metal on the ceiling. We try to control the space but when we can't, we have to control the sound. At the first facility we did for Basecamp Fitness, for example, sound treatment was not an option. We knew from previous installations that Renkus-Heinz beam steering was what these spaces needed."