What's new for 2005 | January | February | May |

Digipage Provides Selecter With The Compact Solution For Holmes Place

01/05/2005

The networking architecture of Australian Monitor's DigiPage matrix switching system is proving a winning formula for AV company, Selecter, in their installations for health club group Holmes Place.

Set up two years ago, Trevor Montgomery's company was awarded the contract to upgrade, fit-out and maintain the multizone Holmes Place sites around 12 months ago. He remembers finding a lot of custom-built equipment within the estate - "expensive to build and maintain, with a lot of relays which were highly space consuming."

And so began his quest for the ideal integrated solution. After experimenting with another system, his desire for something "more PA-oriented" led him to the 8 x 8 DigiPage zoning system; and it has remained his preferred matrix device ever since.

"We first used it at Barbican, which was a difficult site, and required something reliable and robust," he said. "What I like about the DigiPage system is that it is highly flexible. Engineers love it, but at the same time it looks too complex to be tampered with by unskilled staff. On top of everything it is extremely compact."

Selecter handle the entire integration for Holmes Place - from the Cardio Theater personal wireless entertainment systems to the 52in rear projection screens lined up in the main gym.

Most recently the company has installed a n 8 x 8 DigiPage Jr and remote panels at Holmes Place Hendon - on the site of a former cinema. This was supplied - like the T&M Systems SA 200 and SA 450s amplifiers, which drive the sound in the aerobics studios - by UK distributors Fuzion plc, who provide all the support that a busy installer needs to depend on.

The DigiPage system comprises the 8x8 Zone Paging system (the remote paging station being situated at the front desk), and each of the eight zones has a dedicated local mic or line input. Six of these inputs are routable to any of the eight zones while a priority input, activated by the ducking circuitry, puts out Alert, Evacuation, Bell and Pre-Announce Chimes. At Hendon, the eight-zone DigiPage Mic station services the Main Gym, Club Room, Toilets & Walkway, Changing Areas, Ladies Gym and Beauty areas.

But in an application which does not have its own dedicated Control Room, space is also at a premium; because of DigiPage's eight-channel configuration Selecter have been able to reduce the previous 40U rack height to a mere 21U to serve Hendon's five-zone set-up- with help from three Australian Monitor AMIS 1202P 120W + 120W dual-channel power amps. This pumps out background music from the programmable hard disk scheduler and five-disk CD changer as back-up.

In addition Selecter fit as standard an Australian Monitor MP8 monitor panel which allows engineers to monitor up to eight channels of 100V line amplification from a 2U rack panel - "generally allowing them to hear what's going on."

Trevor adds, "Because the DigiPage network is all wired on CAT 5 it's nice and controllable and it means that everything from a pump station to a telephone cable can be added to the network."

The next port of call for Selecter will be Holmes Place Ealing where Trevor Montgomery will again be applying a complete AV solution. He concludes, "It's all well and good having great kit but without the back-up it's nothing - and with Fuzion we know we can rely on that. Their response time is fast and they spent a lot of time at the PLASA Show explaining the merits of the DigiPage system.

"As for Holmes Place, we have halved their service call outs & requirements and improved customer satisfaction as a result."

| Top of Page | Return to Home Page |

DigiPage Connects BoomtowN Casino In USA

17/2/05

BOSSIER CITY, LOUISIANA: The modern casino - one of the fastest growing entertainment venues in the United States - is a beehive of activity. Around-the-clock background music, live music, prize drawings, flickering plasma displays, all compete for the customer's attention.
 
All of that source material also presents an audio routing and distribution challenge for casino entertainment departments. What makes it even more challenging is the fact that not all areas of the property have the same needs. What goes into one area may not be right for an adjacent area. Whether it's paging, music or even in-house advertising, the ability to appropriately target audio source material is essential.
 
At BoomtowN Casino, a Pinnacle Entertainment property in Bossier City, Louisiana, the need for better audio management became increasingly clear last year. Todd George, General Manager of BoomtowN casino assigned Greg Miles, head of BoomtowN's Entertainment Department, to redesign the casino's paging and background music system. The goal: tie everything together, but at the same time, provide for the ability to tailor content to specific areas as needed, layering in override functions that give the casino flexibility of source selection and outputs.
 
Miles researched a wide market of possibilities and what he chose as the backbone of BoomtowN's solution was the DigiPage system from Australian Monitor Co., a product that Sennheiser Electronics Corporation recently added to the family of professional audio products it distributes in the United States and South America.
 
An audio routing and control system that allows multiple sources to be selectively targeted to different areas in a large number of combinations, DigiPage has given BoomtowN the ability to carve its property into 16 audio zones and to easily manage the delivery of content into each as needed.
 
"This was a huge undertaking and the possible solutions many, noted Miles. "Then I remembered an article I read about Australian Monitor's DigiPage system and I was hooked on finding it. After searching around, I contacted Shreveport Music Company who placed the order for me."
 
"What makes DigiPage stand out in this project is its ability to effectively create 16 separate zones in the casino. Then we can input either an in-zone local source or choose to input from six different defined source selections into any of the 16 zones and also allow for paging functions into any combination of selected zones or across all zones," continues Miles. "The casino had had a zone system before this, but it didn't have the flexibility that DigiPage enables, without having to do a lot of external patching and wiring. Prior to this we were tied to having one music source to each zone, with no capability of doing mic inputs."
 
A few of the casino's 16 separate zones are a buffet area, a restaurant, elevators, restrooms, pavilion areas, a hotel lobby and meeting rooms. Among the six sources are three of Onkyo's NetTunes, one of which has in-house advertising periodically inserted over the music and two cable music channels. One source remains open, allowing for special announcements or promotion events that can be distributed to different zones as selected.
 
The system is designed so that each zone has local input capability, meaning the zone's primary source can be overridden. That comes in handy for paging, as well as on-the-spot functions that utilize a microphone, such a prize giveaway announcements.
 
The DigiPage system consists of two base station units linked together with CAT-5 cable, each of which controls eight zones. It also incorporates a wall-based remote control unit that allows users to select program inputs and adjust volume in their zone. They're connected in a daisy-chain format via CAT-5. Not all zones, however, are equipped with DigiPage Wall Panels.
 
The system also utilizes six paging stations, where users can access a touch pad that provides ready selection of each of the 16 zones. There, the user can decide to either page into all zones simultaneously or selected zones. The stations are equipped with gooseneck microphones, but paging can also be done via an in-house phone system that outputs to the PA system.
 
A Dynavox by Mackenzie Labs, a specialized piece of equipment that allows audio advertisements to be inserted into live and program audio sources, also interfaces with DigiPage.
 
So far, DigiPage has exceeded the casino's expectations, Miles says. It's enabled us to do a better job of making the casino property a user-friendly venue for both employees and customers, and one that's easier to configure for marketing and promotional purposes.
 
Concluded Miles, "It's safe to say that DigiPage brought BoomtowN Casino into the 21st century. None of our difficult routing could have been accomplished without it. It embodies matrix routing capabilities of systems costing thousands more. Using DigiPage kept our installation cost down while giving us one of the most flexible systems I've encountered in over 24 years."
 
Australian Monitor is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and additionally maintains warehouses worldwide in Asia, Western Europe, and the U.S.A. The company's continually expanding range of sound contracting products includes mixer amplifiers, power amplifiers, distribution amplifiers, mic/line mixers, zone paging systems, and ceiling speakers, as well as associated products.
 
Established in 1945 in Wedemark, Germany, Sennheiser is the acknowledged world leader in microphone technology, RF-wireless and infrared sound transmission, headphone transducer technology, and most recently, in the development of active noise-cancellation. Sennheiser Electronic Corporation is the U.S. wholly-owned subsidiary, with headquarters in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

| Top of Page | Return to Home Page |

Casino de Maurice, Mauritius

19/1/05

The Casino de Maurice in Curepipe; which has recently gone under major renovations was originally designed to include a volume control for the various locations but no zone control what so ever. Enter Technical Dynamics who offered a low cost, yet highly flexible zone controlled system from Australian Monitor and won the job based on the features which made the proposed system stand out from the rest, and not just its price.

IMEC Consulting approved the Australian Monitor DigiPage System, agreeing with Technical Dynamics that the system offered a number of very clever features with regard to background music and paging control, yet simple to use which the Casino could benefit from. Mr. Anand Gopal of IMEC was heard saying he had never seen such a complex yet simple to use Matrix and paging system in all his years of Audio Consulting and added to this the extremely smooth and crystal clear sound filling the various rooms from the Marantz 5 Disc CD Player.

The Casino de Maurice is now a fully integrated six zone system with remote paging, volume control and source selection. The system also includes Australian Monitor power amplifiers, monitor panel, wall and ceiling speakers.
Each zone had its own acoustic challenges. For instance, the "slot machine zone" had a high ambient SPL and the "gaming zone" had an elaborate decor that needed to be respected. The end result is excellence in aesthetics and sound quality.
The client is extremely happy and Technical Dynamics are very happy with the installation. Shirish Rummun of Technical Dynamics comments "we received excellent factory support from the whole Australian Monitor team as this was our first install using a DigiPage and the products proved easy to install and very reliable. We are very proud that we were able to up-sell the client and give them a system that fully met their needs and offered much more".

The install has 6 zones all together where by the main zones are the Slot machines zone which has Australian Monitor black Install 30 speakers and custom painted silver grey Australian Monitor Quick Fix8 ceiling speakers. The two entrance lobbies which are both fitted with Australian Monitor Quick Fix5 speakers.

The installation took less than 3 weeks to complete and the testing and commissioning took less than a day. No additional equalizers were needed in the set up as the 2 band equalizer on the DigiPage provided more than enough boost to the low frequencies adding a nice punch to the sound in the various zones, each zone had the Hi or Low frequencies cut or boosted independently depending on the interiors acoustic of the room.
Shirish Rummun of Technical Dynamics comments "Australian Monitor's DigiPage is an extremely versatile piece of equipment and I can honestly say it is the Audio Gods gift to contractors around the world, where by simplicity and versatility is packed together in an extremely robust and reliable unit with an attractive price tag".

The simplicity of the system brought a huge smile to Mr. Mike Summers General Manager of the Casino, who has a paging microphone installed in his office to call up his employees or make announcements from any part of the building without having to make a general call, as well as an automatic voice announcer connected to the fire alarm system which overrides all inputs and asks the clients the evacuate the building through the sound system. Much to his surprise the sound system in the Slot Machine Area was used as the main PA system during the opening ceremony of the Casino, Mr. Mike Summers was heard saying "In all his years of working in various casinos around the world he has never heard such a rich and punchy sounding PA system which could easily handle high volume playing without losing its clarity and intelligibility."

Technical Dynamics Ltd
Email: techdy@intnet.mu
Tel: +230 6983927
Fax: +230 6980322

The system includes:
Speed Rack 21 Unit High x 1
Digipage x 1
Digipage Mic x 1
MP8 x 1
AMIS 1202P x 2
DCM500 x 2
Install 30 x 9
Quick Fix 8 x 14
Quick Fix 5 x 20
IC30 x 1
LB1 Voice Announcer x 1
Marantz cc4300Pro x 1