‘Six-star’ Gym Fitted with BlacklineX

Located in Bedfordview in Johannesburg, the newly opened Body Action Gym is a six-star wellness facility which provides access to world-class fitness equipment, personalised nutritional guidance and a lifestyle environment like no other.

The gym boasts 5000 sq.m of cardio and weight training space; an array of dedicated aerobic, yoga, Pilates, HIIT and spinning studios; an open-air basketball court, boxing ring, 50m sprint track and outdoor elite fitness training area—plus a kids area, in-house cafe and apparel shop.

Key focus was given to the various entertainment systems which needed to seamlessly integrate into the gym’s overall vision for the facility. And this was highlighted by a state-of-the-art Martin Audio BlacklineX PA system.

John Greaves, Audio Specialist at Audiosure, the Martin Audio distributor, explained the various factors which led to the elaborate audio system design. “We were trying to achieve an extremely high-quality, distributed, multi-zone, multi-purpose, state-of-the-art audio solution which would allow each area of the gym to have audio functioning either independently or collectively,” he said. The Audiosure Solutions team worked closely with Craig Harris and Mark Bracco from Audiobility, specialists in control automation, to help turn Body Action Gym’s vision into reality.

The Audiosure Solutions team had to be cognisant of the fact that the gym sits across three floors of a multi-storey building, which is shared with corporate offices. This posed a slight issue for the team, as the audio system needed to deliver club-level sound when guest DJs were playing, while at the same time leave the occupants of the offices above free from disturbance. Greaves added, “Structural transference was the gym’s biggest concern, so we needed to make sure that we isolated the speakers and subwoofers from any concrete surfaces.” This was achieved with the use of rubber mounts and steel suspension rope, and helped prevent any vibrations from being transferred through the concrete to the adjacent floors.

The main gym area consists of 16 Blackline X8s mounted to custom column clamps, as well as six Blackline X118 subwoofers suspended from the concrete slab. The entire solution is controlled by a dedicated Martin Audio DX0.5 speaker management system, allowing complete control of processing functions such as EQ, crossover and system protection. Each of the studios are equipped with a pair of powered Blackline XP12s, providing 1300W of class-leading sound from an extremely compact enclosure. The XP12s are all pole mounted from the ceiling, utilising the aforementioned rubber mounts.

The surrounding areas, including the indoor boxing area, outdoor CrossFit section, outdoor running track and basketball court and kids’ areas, were also equipped with sound, and careful selection of appropriate wireless microphones—from Belt-pack Transmitter Systems to Headset Microphones for the trainer—was applied, while similar attention to detail was given to the lighting.

Greg Payne, Director at Audiosure, described the whole project as “an absolute pleasure.” He added, “From concept to completion, the outcome was exactly how we had planned it. Audiosure is privileged to distribute some great brands, and being able to incorporate these into this project meant that the result was pure perfection.”

And John Greaves also added his praise of the Martin Audio solution. “We are big fans of Blackline X because it offers exceptional sound quality at an affordable price, it offers very neat mounting hardware and an aesthetically pleasing enclosure design. The Blackline X powered enclosures are wonderful because of their built-in DSP, limiters and again the same points as above.

“It was a compelling solution because the Blackline X8s are small and neat enough to be distributed all around the venue, while being impressive enough to cover the space effectively, with great sounding audio.”