Prince Alfred College
Music Rooms
Acoustic Treatment

23 Dequetteville Terrace
Kent Town SA 5067

• Design
• Installation
• Project Management
• Support

Established in 1869, Prince Alfred College is one of Australia’s leading independent day and boarding schools, providing a well-rounded and inclusive education for boys from ELC through to Year 12. Prince Alfred College’s main campus on Dequetteville Terrace in Adelaide, is set on 9.8 hectares of spacious grounds, just 2.5 km from the city’s CBD, on the edge of the beautiful eastern parklands. High-quality teaching, academic excellence and exceptional facilities and learning environments are central to the educational experience at Prince Alfred College.

The foundation stone of the Main Building at Prince Alfred College was laid by HRH Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, during his 1867 visit to South Australia. Over time the school has expanded and purpose-built education, boarding and administration buildings have been tastefully incorporated into the Prince Alfred College campus setting.

It was into this environment that Integrated Audio Solutions was introduced after an approach by A/V technician for Prince Alfred College Dan Walford, to address its problematic acoustics in the College’s two main music rooms. A site evaluation, accompanied by both Dan and the Director of Performing Arts, Andrew Edge, revealed the complex’s large untreated reverberant surfaces were contributing to speech and music intelligibility issues.

The brief was relatively straightforward. It was to ensure the spaces were aurally comfortable and pleasing, without compromising the musicality and subtle nuances inherent in the live performance. Student and teacher wellbeing was also of the upmost importance. Both the spaces where in turn assessed for reverberation time, detailed 3D drawings were produced showing the optimum acoustic panel layout, reflecting the best acoustic absorption, whilst maintaining the musicality of the spaces.

The result of this attention to detail was immediately obvious and made the environment more coherent for both the students and teachers.

The chosen absorption panels in the Prince Alfred College project were the Primacoustic Broadway series, incorporating high-density (6 pcf /96kg/m3) glass wool core for the best possible absorption results. These panels have a Fire Rating to meet Australian Standards (AS/NZS 1530.3) certification, including a certified clean air rating.

The combination of 122cm x 31 cm control columns, 60cm x 60 cm control cubes and Cumulus Tri-Corner Traps where incorporated into the design.The control cubes were laid out in a checkerboard arrangement, thus acting as ‘soft diffusing’ absorbers.

In addition, control columns with fabricated frames where also placed above both drum kits in the space adding some control of the drums splashes. On the lower guitar walls Primacoustic Control Column absorber where positioned in-between the guitars on both the existing guitar walls.

Perspex drum shields will be added later in the year to give extra bleeding isolation for the kits. For future expansion the layout was arranged so that printable panel absorbers could be added on the lower sections. This will allow for printing on the panel surface (one-time process), or Prince Alfred College could choose to utilise the IAS system of peel-off printable breathable fabric, enabling a series of rotatable “art work images”, further adding to the ambience and the overall aesthetics of the spaces.