Ever since the launch of Belgium’s public bus transportation carrier De Lijn in 1991, it has been used all over the country to easily get to your destination by bus. Because Belgium is the country with the highest rate of traffic jams per capita the use of public transportation keeps rising to avoid these traffic jams. The government facility is therefore also constantly looking to expand and renew their bus depots across Belgium. Recently in Hasselt, a large 6.5-hectare bus depot opened that, in the future, will even have its own tram station.
Flemish Minister of Mobility Ben Weyts and Director-General of De Lijn Roger Kesteloot have inaugurated the new depot in Hasselt in September 2017. Aside from a large parking lot for the busses, the depot also has a maintenance area, offices and even a driving school which makes it one of the best equipped depots in Belgium. A good audio system for both background music and public address systems was necessary for ensuring smooth operations in the depot. The choice of audio installation for the whole project quickly fell on AUDAC.
The entire complex consists of 3 large areas: the office building, the refuelling station and the maintenance centre. As main audio source 4 different TMP40 SourceCon™ FM tuner modules were implemented in the XMP44 professional modular audio player which makes it very easy to play different radio stations. The MTX48 and MTX88 audio matrixes make it possible to easily control the background music and paging messages in all different zones of the facility. 2 APM101MKII Digital paging microphones were also installed to deliver voice messages to the offices as well as the maintenance area. The entire setup is powered by the CAP448 and CAP424 100V power amplifiers.
In the offices over 38 CS74/W Quick fit 2-way 5 1/4" ceiling speakers are used to maintain a beautiful but discreet design. For the refuelling station, which is located outside, 3 WX302/OB 3” weatherproof outdoor wall speakers are used for a perfect reproduction of important announcements and background music. Because of the sound pollution from the different machinery and busses driving in, the maintenance centre proofed to be more of a challenge. To tackle this problem the installers mainly used 40 ASP20 spherical hanging sound projectors. With its smooth frequency response and great efficiency the ASP20 ensures high fidelity music and speech reproduction with a 360° horizontal coverage.
The volume of all speakers are adjustable due to the rotatable dials in the VC3036/W 100V volume controllers and the employees can easily change the music input thanks to the PC300/W program selectors. In the larger zones the MWX45 MTX wall panel controller is installed so that adjustments to the input can be made directly to the matrix itself. Because the volume and program selectors were installed in each zone, all employees can easily choose their favourite radio station and sound volume at their working place.
