In South Australia, Adelaide Airport's new $260 million state-of-the-art terminal features no fewer than 98 Turbosound loudspeakers. The 75,000sq.m terminal will initially cater for more than five million passengers a year, but has been designed to cope with up to eight million users within 10 years. The terminal is equipped to handle up to 27 aircraft simultaneously, and process 3,000 passengers an hour during peak periods.

Turbosound Qlight TQ-230 was the principal loudspeaker chosen to deliver these services. The TQ-230 is a compact cabinet comprising dual 5" woofers and a 1" compression driver on a rotatable horn, with a wide dispersion pattern. All 98 loudspeakers in the Adelaide terminal were custom-fitted with a high quality 100V line toroidal transformers and powered by a combination of Australian Monitor and Lab.gruppen amplifiers.

The system was jointly designed by consulting group Bestec and Audio Telex, the Australian distributor for Turbosound, and supplied to the airport by AV Central in Adelaide, who installed, programmed and commissioned the system. Colin Campbell, project manager for AV Central, commented: "The Turbosound speakers look great, were easy to install and required very little equalisation in what is a very reflective environment. Announcements are crystal clear."

The TQ-230s are installed throughout the building, including the check-in halls, retail area, departure gates and baggage halls. The audio is distributed by three MediaMatrix NIONs (linked by XDAB) used in conjunction with a MediaMatrix PageMatrix system. The NIONs provide all of the mixing, routing, processing and ambient level sensing functions, as well as the priority paging requirements, pre-announce chimes and the scheduled pre-recorded messages. There are three amplifier locations with CobraNet being used to distribute audio to the remote racks.

Photo: Newly-opened Adelaide Airport's Multi-User Integrated Terminal (MUIT, also known as Terminal 1 or T1 in short). This photo has been exclusively licensed for use by CARNOC. Photographer: Simon Li