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Speech Clarity – A Priority for Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Posted on Friday, December 19, 2014

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is the first museum solely dedicated to the evolution, celebration and future of human rights. The museum is a major project for Winnipeg and is the only federal museum to be built outside of Canada’s capital of Ottawa in over fifty years. It stands on Treaty One territory, not far from the place where the Métis rebelled under Louis Riel in 1870. Treaty One was Canada’s first treaty after Confederation.

The striking landmark building was designed by the renowned architect, Antoine Predock. His design for the CMHR is a journey, beginning with a descent into the earth where visitors enter the building through the "roots" of the museum. Visitors are led through the Great Hall, then a series of vast spaces and ramps, before culminating in the Tower of Hope, a tall spire protruding from the CMHR that provides visitors with a view of downtown Winnipeg.

The building’s sound system was designed by Mulvey and Banani, located in Toronto. The principal designer was Greg Rushton. Installation was handled by audio visual specialists, Inland Audio Visual Limited, and the project manager was Inland AV’s Barry Carr.

The sound system’s primary purpose is building wide multi-zone paging, but in specified areas the loudspeaker systems can also be used for local audio needs, such as those required by the banquet halls and classrooms. BGM is also to be incorporated into the system at a future date. The electronics are located in five central rack rooms and networked via Cobranet. Some six-hundred and fifty Community ceiling loudspeakers were used throughout the project. This includes a combination of 4.5-inch D4 and 6.5-inch D6 D SERIES loudspeakers, and powerful CLOUD1266 12-inch coaxial ceiling loudspeakers. The system incorporates Peavey DSP and Crest amplifiers are used to power the loudspeakers.

Inland AV installed touchscreen controlled AV systems in three classrooms, featuring projectors that can run independently or over the network. They also installed the corporate boardrooms with audio, video and simultaneous interpretation and teleconference systems. “Community loudspeakers are designed for installations where uncompromised speech clarity and great music quality are prime requirements,” said Loren Robinson, Community’s Regional Manager. “It’s very gratifying to see them used in such an impressive system for this internationally prestigious project.”

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